The Spring 2009 Databits is here and is full of some great articles: Following the presentation of ProjectDB at the 2009 LTER Science Council Meeting Wade Sheldon provides a great introductory article for those interested in getting started with XQuery and the native-XML database eXist, the primary technologies used for that project’s development. Complimenting this is an article by Margaret O’Brien on the lessons learned from the ProjectDB workshops. A contributing guest author, Sonja Palfner, shares her experiences doing collaborative work in e-infrastructure. There are ‘Good Tools’ articles for the rapid development of MySQL table-editing interfaces, software for managing sensor-network data, an auto-documentation tool for relation databases and an online site providing online courses in software development and management for scientists and engineers. In ‘News Bits’, read about some important Information Management workshops that occurred. And enjoy a great set of three reviews of articles sharing a common thread central to the work of LTER information managers. Enjoy!
Table of Contents
| Featured Articles | ||
| Representing Geographic Features | Robert Ischiel Petersen | 1 |
| Vocabulary Development as a Tool for Community-building | Lynn Yarmey | 2 |
| Cyberinfastructure Traves: Sharing & Shaping Time, Space, and Data | Sonja Palfner | 2 |
| Getting started with eXist and XQuery | Wade Sheldon | 5 |
| Commentary | ||
| Lessons learned from the projectDB workshops | Margaret O’Brien | 7 |
| News Bits | ||
| Pacific Coast Zooplankton Working Group: Data and Information Infastructure | Karen Baker | 7 |
| Dynamically Plotting the Future: An International Information Management Workshop for Forest Dynamic Plot Databases | John Porter & Meei-ru Jeng | 8 |
| Good Tools and Programs | ||
| LEADUM Software DBScribe | Wade Sheldon | 9 |
| Software Carpentry | Wade Sheldon | 9 |
| ‘Vista Data Vision’ Data Analysis Software Review | Jason Downing | 9 |
| “Form”ulating a Simple Solution to Editing Chores | John Porter | 10 |
| Good Reads | ||
| Informatics and the Electronic Geophysical Year | Karen Baker and Matthew Bietz | 10 |
| Data at Work: Supporting Sharing in Science and Engineering | Mason Kortz | 11 |
| Motivating Data Publication | John Porter | 11 |
| Calendar | 11 |
