BG-BASE News
Note: the following text has been taken directly from the June, 1993 issue of BG-BASE News (blue). No attempt has been made to reformat it for use on the web.
BG-BASE News Volume 1, Number 1
News
It is with great pleasure that we introduce the first issue of our new quarterly newsletter, which will be sent to all registered BG-BASE users. BG-BASE has changed dramatically in the past few months, and this issue will help bring you up to date on these changes.
You are ail aware by now that on 15 March 1993 The Holden Arboretum stepped forward to provide a new home for the continued support and development of the software. We couldn't be more pleased with this new relationship between BG-BASE, Inc. and The Holden Arboretum. The Trustees of the Arboretum and C.W. Eliot Paine, Director of the Arboretum, deserve much credit for making this possible. A special thank you to Peter Bristol, Arboretum Horticulturist, for serving as intermediary during the months of negotiation leading to the agreement. Michael O'Neal is staffing the office in Ohio and will be primarily responsible for user support in North America; he will also be working on further system enhancements, documentation, and training.
In a more recent development, Kerry Wafter will be moving from Cambridge to Scotland later this summer to carry on BG-BASE activities in association with the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. For the first six months, he will be determining the world-wide interest in BG-BASE. Along with Mike, he will also be involved in system enhancements, training, and support, especially for the increasing number of users in the United Kingdom.
Over the next few months we will be diligently addressing the needs of the user community. First and foremost will be increased interaction with our users, starting with this newsletter. In addition to passing on general information about BG-BASE and its future directions, we will provide specific examples on how to get the most out of your system. Each issue will contain information on a little known or poorly understood BG-BASE or Revelation command (see FILESUMMARY in this issue), recent enhancements and (dare we say it?) bug fixes, as well as user profiles and notes of interest on the rest of the computer industry (see DOS 6 notes). We also want to hear from you and hope that you will use this vehicle to communicate with other users.
Of course, our top priority will be the release of BG-BASE version 4, developed using Advanced Revelation. We are very excited about this next generation of BG-BASE and we think you will be, too. Functions to retrieve and display images, create seamless interfaces with mapping systems, and painlessly generate reports have now been built in to version 4. The bottom line is that users will see increased performance and greater ease of use. We look forward to your comments as we demonstrate a prototype at AABGA. (see announcement of the next users meeting).
With the recent establishment of two international support and development centers for BG-BASE, the system is poised to grow rapidly. We have come a long way since the early days of one person working on BG-BASE as a part-time venture! We take this opportunity to thank the Center for Plant Conservation and the Arnold Arboretum for providing the initial base of operations; their votes of confidence were important factors in the early success of the concept. We also thank The Holden Arboretum and the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh for their votes of commitment and support as we move forward. We are glad to be able to devote much more of our energies to developing and supporting this rapidly evolving system.
BG-BASE is and will continue to be an application primarily designed to meet the worldwide botanical community's needs in the areas of curation of plant collections, membership, development, education, and public interpretation. Without your input, there wouldn't be a BG-BASE. We seek your continued - and increasing interaction as we continue with this work.
Kerry S. Walter & Michael J. O'Neal
BG-BASE version 4
We have nearly completed porting BG-BASE to a new database management platform Advanced Revelation version 3.0. While "regular" Revelation (the platform on which BG-BASE versions 1 to 3.5 were developed) remains one of the most powerful and flexible of any relational database management systems running on IBM compatible microcomputers, even its power is dwarfed by AREV. AREV retains all of Revelation's traditional strengths, such as variable-length and mufti-value fields, but adds tremendously to the user-friendliness by the use of cascading menus, floating windows, and popup screens of valid data entry choices.
As a user, you will appreciate the more consistent user interface and keystrokes, faster processing and indexing, more extensive help, ease in jumping from one file to another, scrolling reports (no longer will you curse when you hit the enter key once too often, losing the page from your screen - simply PgUp to see it again), pop-ups of browse lists and validation codes, the menu-driven report writer, faster selects, and so on the list is too long to present here; you will have to see it to believe it! As developers, we have the advantage of numerous new "hooks" into the underlying database system, allowing us to tighten the linkage between files, the much simplified procedures for making data entry 'screens' (now called 'windows' - you can have many on your screen at once), new ways to index, and so on.
While we could have simply moved the data structure directly to AREV, we have taken this opportunity to re-think virtually all of the BG-BASE files, and in so doing, we have streamlined the file structure - removing unused dictionary items, rearranging dictionaries to put related fields together and seldom used fields at the end, renaming some fields to make them more consistent across files, and creating new files. We have also added user-defined fields in each of the major files; this will vastly enhance our ability to support user-specific needs.
We have written a generic conversion program that will take your data in its existing format and automatically convert it to the new format, so even though things are pretty different "under the hood" you will not need to worry about these structural changes.
What's new in versions 3.5 & 4
BG-BASE has continued to develop and evolve since version 3 was released a little over two years ago. Some of the most important enhancements available in "regular" Revelation (version 3.5) as well as in AREV (version 4) include:
- images - we have realized our long-standing goal of linking black and white or color images to BG-BASE records. These images can displayed directly on an entry window in version 4; for version 3.5 (and 4), the various CARD routines have been rewritten to manage and display these images. This should be a major impetus for gardens to begin using BG-BASE as a tool in their public education and interpretation programs. phonetic searching is now available when using the CARD programs to look up genera or species. Instead of simply doing an exact word match, BG-BASE now uses an algorithm that compares the way words sound when it cannot find an exact match. new (or improved) card routines are now available. These routines now provide you with information on accessions, taxa, genera, families, addresses, and data sources, among other things. Since they are read-only, there is no fear of inadvertently changing (or deleting) a record by using an entry screen to find information.
- an electronic calendar allows you to track events (meetings, visitors, classes, special events) and tasks, or to-do lists. The same module can be used to record time sheets, with hours worked coded against project codes.
- the CONFIGURATION file stores installation-specific information to better optimize and customize BG-BASE.
- data export is now greatly simplified by two new programs - EXPORT (to produce ASCII files) and ITF (to produce ITF records).
- on-screen distribution or point-source maps are now available for use from the NAMES, SPECIMENS, and ACCESSIONS files.
There have also been many changes and additions to the dictionaries of various database files, providing more ways to enter, query, and manipulate your data. Contact Mike for details on upgrades.
BG-BASE Users Meeting, Friday, 2 July, 7 pm; AABGA
The next BG-BASE users meeting will be held in Orlando, Florida on Friday, 2 July, from 7:00-9:00 P.M., in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta. The meeting will begin with an open question and answer period. Following that, the prototype of BG-BASE version 4 will be demonstrated as well as recent enhancements to version 3.5, including the integration of color and black & white images with the database, and the production of distribution maps from the NAMES, ACCESSIONS or the new SPECIMENS files. We will also discuss the procedures for upgrades and new installations, current pricing, and future plans. All users and potential users are urged to attend.
MS DOS 6.0 Update
As of this writing there have been no documented incompatibilities between MS DOS 6.0 and Revelation. However, there have been problems noted within DOS 6.0 between the utility DBLSPACE and the program SMARTDRV. DBLSPACE is a disk compression utility that, in effect, doubles the storage capacity of your hard disk. SMARTDRV is a program that allows more information to be loaded from the hard disk into extended RAM, making your programs run more quickly because repeated reads from the hard disk - always a slow process -- are minimized. There have been reports of compatibility problems and data corruption if a computer is turned off before SMARTDRV has written any changed data from RAM back to the hard disk when DBLSPACE is used. If you are using both DBLSPACE and SMARTDRV, wait a few seconds after you exit BG-BASE before turning off your computer.
Also, don't forget to run the program MEMFIX.EXE that Kerry discussed in a letter to all users in March of last year. This program will assist Revelation and MS DOS 5.0 and DOS 6.0 to coexist peacefully, which is not always the case if you do not use MEMFIX. lf you have not already done so, please contact Mike for a copy of this program; he will send it on disk to you along with instructions on how to modify your REV.BAT file.
User profiles
In each issue of BG-BASE News we will profile one or two institutions using BG-BASE. We hope that this will give you a better idea of how the system is being used, the hardware in use, what staffing is available, what sorts of information might be available for exchange, and so on. In this issue we highlight two very different institutions, each of which uses BG-BASE to manage information other than plant records.
The Massachusetts Horticultural Society(MHS) installed BG-BASE in September, 1990 to run their membership, education, and development departments. They use a Novell NetWare (version 2.2) network to connect 17 IBMs or compatibles, most of them ATs and XTs, and 6 Macs to a 20 MHz 386 file server with 300 Mb hard disk capacity. One person has primary responsibility for BG-BASE in membership, one in development, and one in education.
There are 24,500 records in the MEMBERS file (both active and inactive members are stored in a single file, with flags automatically set by the system to distinguish between the two) and 56,500 records in the DONATIONS file, representing over $5 million in gifts, membership fees, and subscriptions to Society publications. Data were converted from an earlier Paradox database system.
The membership module running at MHS is an outgrowth of what was originally designed for the Arnold Arboretum and later used by the Center for Plant Conservation, with major enhancements to better handle daily reporting needs and subscription fulfilment. Reports are run to summarize daily activity, and membership cards, renewal notices, and mailing labels (sorted in carrier route order) are generated automatically. Security, always an issue in systems handling financial information, is handled by locating the DONATIONS file in a separate subdirectory; only a very few select staff members have Novel] rights to this subdirectory.
The education department shares the MEMBERS file with the membership department, thereby allowing MHS to charge different rates for its courses depending whether the person is a member or not. MHS runs about 40 courses a year, which collectively draw 800 registrations.
The major files used are MEMBERS (used for active and inactive members as well as nonmember course-takers), COURSES, and REGISTRATIONS. Confirmation letters, class lists, and attendance sheets are generated by the system.
The development department uses BG-BASE to target and track solicitations such as Annual Fund or for special projects. It also holds free-text information on donors and potential donors. It lets MHS code donations at five different levels: fiscal year, department, fund, project, and solicitation.
BG-BASE was installed at the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) in October, 1990. Some 177,000 records were converted electronically from an earlier Wang minicomputer. That number has now grown to 287,000 records through the data entry activities of a varying staff (1 -7 people) and electronic incorporation of other data sets. WCMC has a Banyan (version 5.50) network running on 2 linked 386 file servers with a total disk capacity of 1.6 Gb; this capacity is augmented by a 1 Gb optical disk; the Banyan network is linked to a UNIX system with another 6.5 Gb of hard disk space. Until a recent move into a new building using level 3 twisted pair cable, WCMC used a laser link to connect two sites separated by a grazed field.
WCMC uses BG-BASE to monitor the conservation status of threatened plants around the world. The core NAMES file has 70,000 records, representing some 25% of all described vascular plants. Common names (in multiple languages) are stored as are relevant synonymy, life form, status on the CITES appendices, and, most importantly, the IUCN Red Data Book category for degree of threat at the global level. Attached to the NAMES file is the DISTRIBUTIONS file, containing 109,000 records. Distributions are coded at the WCMC area level (all country boundaries are respected, but the fifteen largest countries are further broken into their constituent states or provinces, and all offshore island groups are coded separately from their mother country; thus, the 248 countries currently recognized by ISO are represented by 604 WCMC areas). Each distribution record has a free-text qualifier field, an introduced vs native flag, a data source for the distribution, the RDB category at the area level, the data source for that RDB category, and other fields for number of individuals remaining, date the plant was last seen, habitat type(s), and threat(s).
The WCMC areas are very similar to the Basic Recording Units (BRUS) that were approved by TDWG as a global standard for recording distributions of plants. WCMC has digitized these BRUs and can now display the world distribution of any plant in BG-BASE, color-coded for conservation status, in 3-5 seconds.
WCMC has utilized the data source (DS) file more than any other BG-BASE institution. All information in other parts of the system is linked to the DS file, which contains 16,000 records, making it the world's largest computerized bibliography on plant conservation. This file was used to produce a 645-page World Plant Conservation Bibliography published jointly by WCMC and RBG, Kew in 1990.
BG-BASE is used to produce printouts on request based on various selection criteria such as: 1) all threatened taxa in a particular country/ies; 2) all threatened taxa in a family or genus; 3) tropical timbers of conservation concern. These listings give taxonomic placement, scientific name, any known common names and synonyms, life form, IUCN RDB category, status on any CITES appendix, world distribution, and conservation status within each area; all data sources used are listed at the end as are a statistical summary of the world RDB categories and an index to common names found in that report.
The Latin American Plants Project at the Smithsonian Institution uses a copy of the WCMC database to track the conservation of plants throughout Latin America; early in 1994 SI Press will publish Threatened Plants of Middle America; BG-BASE is being used to produce the camera-ready copy for the listings in this book. At about the same time, WCMC will publish the World Red List for Plants containing a listing of some 35,000 taxa of plants that are threatened in one or more countries. A very complex BG-BASE program produces the 900+ pages of camera-ready copy that will constitute the majority of this book.
Recent installations
Many new installations of BG-BASE have taken place since CPC (and, originally, Mike) moved to St. Louis and Kerry moved to England a little over two years ago. They are as follows:
- Main Botanical Garden, Moscow (May, 1991). BG-BASE's help screens and menus were translated into Russian for this installation, one of the premier botanic gardens in Russia.
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya (August, 1991). BG-BASE was installed in this Sri Lankan garden under a WWF contract and is used to curate the extensive collections as well as to monitor the conservation status of medicinal plants.
- Mount Stuart Gardens (August, 1991). This is a private estate on an island off the west coast of Scotland that specializes in conifers and rhododendrons
- Latin American Plants Program, Smithsonian Institution(February, 1992). This is a joint venture with IUCN - The World Conservation Union and WCMC in which Smithsonian staff track the conservation status of plants throughout Latin America.
- Birmingham Botanical Gardens (June, 1992). This is a municipal garden opened in 1962 consisting of 67 acres, 50 of which have been developed into formal display areas.
- Sir Harold Hillier Gardens and Arboretum (September, 1992). This famous collection in southern England comprises 40,000 plants representing 1 1,000 taxa on 160 acres.
- The North Carolina Arboretum (October, 1992). This spectacular new arboretum in the heart of the Blue Ridge mountains is using BG-BASE to generate plastic labels for all plants in nursery and propagation areas.
- Salisbury State University (January, 1993). SSU is one of the first universities to use BG-BASE as a curatorial tool for its campus, which is managed as an arboretum.
- Royal Horticultural Society (Wisley) (June, 1993). Using the NAMES file acquired from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh as a basis, this new installation is beginning the long task of entering the accessions, which have been tracked on cards until now.
We welcome these new users; together, they bring the number of BG-BASE installations to 46.
Tec. Tips
Command -- FILESUMMARY
It is a good idea to periodically review all of your BG-BASE files to ensure they are intact and to make sure individual records are not growing too large (Remember, the maximum record size Revelation allows is 64K, or 64,000 bytes). The command FILESUMMARY provides a good way to do this. Typing FILESUMMARY or RUN NEWFILE FILESUMMARY at TCL will generate a detailed report on the screen or to your printer (when asked what file(s) to summarize, type ALL). Not only does this program produce useful information about your BG-BASE files and records, it also "exercises" your hard disk and can help determine any weak areas on the disk.
There are two things you should look for when running this report:
- Make sure FILESUMMARY processes all of your files and returns you to TCL. If the report "hangs" or aborts, you may have one of several possible problems. Write down any error messages exactly as they appear and note the last file that processed correctly. Please send or fax this information to Mike immediately.
- If the report runs successfully, check the column labelled "Longest record" for records approaching 64,000 bytes. Again, records of this size will cause problems in Revelation and may require preventative action.
The length of time it takes to run FILESUMMARY depends on the number of records in your system, the speed of your computer, and the amount of network traffic. At The Holden Arboretum, which has 6,400 NAMES records, 10,700 ACCESSIONS records, 12,200 PLANTS records and 6,700 MEMBERS records, this report takes 45 minutes to generate when run on a 33 MHz 486. At the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), FILESUMMARY is run at the end of each month to track the activity in each BG-BASE file. Here, with nearly 300,000 records on BG-BASE, it takes roughly 2 1/2 hours to run the report on a 33 MHz 386.
Please send a copy of your FILESUMMARY report (whether you have any problems or not) to Mike for our records so that we can better support you when you have questions or problems.
© Copyright BG-BASE, Inc., 1997-.
Last updated: 27 September 2001