History of ANBG's Information Technology

The Gopher protocol provides a simple and reliable standard for the
distribution and retrieval of information. The number of gopher
servers is growing daily and it may not be long before a gopher
client is standard inclusion in every workstations' network toolkit.

Dataset custodians need now only provide a Gopher server and gateways
into existing data services to make their information available to
a wide audience. In a research context, the client base may already
be Gopher-literate (Gopherate). Local users love Gopher as a means
of accessing information in relational databases.

Using Perl and the go4gw server, building gateways into existing
datasets is a simple and relatively painless exercise. If your
application is built on the Oracle DBMS, oraperl is also recomended
(perl extensions for other DBMS?). If you can write a script that
understands your database and can communicate with a gopher, anything is
possible. Wrap your SQL in a little Perl, present a directory of
options to the client and respond to its selections.

The Australian National Botanic Gardens Gopher server is available at
155.187.10.12 on port 70 [domain name hassles should be over next
week and we will post our new address]. It incorporates gateways
into our Oracle based Integrated Botanic Information system (IBIS),
and presents to the client directories of search options ( gopher
type 7 ) that may be applied recursively to construct relatively
complex SQL queries. Output is available in tagged (useful for other
applications, maybe ASN.1 soon) and human readable formats.

Drop in and have a look around. Gateways can be found in the
"ANBG Information Services " directory under "IBIS Database Gateway"
and access is currently available to the Australian Plant Name Index
and the CBG herbarium records. We also use it internally for access
to registry applications. The Living collection and Photograph
applications will be added soon. Please look at the README files and
take account of the fact that we are still experimenting. Query
options vary with the application, items may change location and new
options may be added on a daily basis. There is also a lot of
interesting information for people with botanic or environmental
biodiversions; discriptive and background information, and a few test
images, from the gardens is available in the ANBG Gopher menu
structure.

Mail to ghw@anbg.gov.au if you you have problems with the
application, like what you find, can see potential that is not yet
tapped, or would like more information, scripts, etc.

Many thanks to the GopherTeam at UofMN for gopher, Larry Wall for
Perl, Kevin Stock for oraperl and (of course) Oracle.