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Re: WDC - Updating procedure

Howard,

I am glad you started to speak about the problem of WDC updates.


There are two questions:

- 1 - How to update the entries.

The primary means should be the web. This procedure has already been used for US
and France. The conclusions are the following:
- it is efficient
- the interface was too poor. People had to reenter all the information. There
was no link to the actual directory.
- there was a number of weaknesses in the cgi-bin interface. This can be easily
solved but does not answer to the preceding point
- Control was made through the national editors. It is a very delicate problem
Brian and myself have discussed that lengthly:
  + having no control would be dangerous: how to check the validity of an
information. National editors are supposed to have some knowledge about labs in
their country.
  + installing true and complete controls is impossible since not everybody has
permanent and good access to the internet.

As you certainly remember we have done some tests, last year, about LDAP 
directories. This could be a solution: national or regional directories would be
updated by local responsible (national, regional). People would submit their
query and the ditor will have to approved it. It would work along the same
principles (but with a better software) than applications to register a software
in SInCris database (in fact the directory was one of the reason to write this
software). Then local updates would automatically come back to Chester and
update the main base.

It means answers to very sensitive problems:

- local copies of portions of WDC would be distributed in different places
- local people would have to maintain the software
- local editors should be really active. (Well there is a solution to this: if a
national editor does not work it is easy to redirect the queries to the regional
one.)
- the software has to be developed.

Another solution follows about the same principles but there is only one
central database in Chester which does the job to filter the entries (or the
general editor does the daily work from a distance).

Anyway it is necessary to have a better interface which allows people to update
part of the information.

But I agree that solutions should be installed this year.

Open for discussion.

With best regards,

Yves
-----

 Yves EPELBOIN
 E-mail: epelboin@lmcp.jussieu.fr - http://www.lmcp.jussieu.fr/~epelboin
      Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris VI
      Case  115 -- 4, place Jussieu --  F-75252 Paris Cedex 05
      phone: (00 33)  01 44 27 52 11   --   fax: (00 33) 01 44 27 37 85

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