From 8-10 June 1997, ZADI/IGR AND IPGRI jointly organized a training workshop with the objective to promote the on-line availability of central crop databases. The event was financially supported by ECPGR.

The meeting was attended by 8 CCDB managers, 2 guests, the 6 members of the Advisory Group and 2 participants from the hosting institute (see Appendix 1). The full programme is given in Appendix 2.

Prior to the start of the workshop, the Advisory Group met to discuss practical aspects of meeting, to review progress on its tasks and to discuss its future role (see summary in Appendix 3).

Programme

Plenary Presentations

• Lorenzo Maggioni discussed the status of the ECCDBs and reported on the outcomes of the Advisory Group's discussions.
• Technical issues concerning the development of the European Platform were presented by Kevin Painting.
• The eight CCDBs managers (see below) and the invited guest Edgardo Giordani (minor fruits) gave comprehensive presentations of their database systems.

• Daniel Jiménez Krause presented an approach of using BASIS database as a central, powerful on-line DB host (See Appendix 4)
• Morten Hulden presented the possibilities of using WAIS for providing on-line access to databases (See Appendix 5).
• Helmut Knüpffer presented an approach of extending a PC database management system (FoxPro) with a Web interface (See Appendix 6)
• Theo van Hintum presented aspects of providing on-line downloadable databases (See Appendix 7)
• Daniel Jiménez Krause and Siegfried Harrer demonstrated the upload of a dBASE database to an on-line searchable BASIS database (See Appendix 8)
• In addition to the agenda, a brief introduction to HTML was given by Daniel Jiménez Krause using the Phleum entry page that had been developed for the European Platform.

Conclusions

Note: these comments have been compiled from the final discussions and from comments recorded on the participants' evaluation forms and are not intended to be exhaustive.

• Many database managers commented how easy it is to have an Internet presence - a flat file and a field description are all that are needed and the database is, in essence, ready to go onto the Internet in a downloadable or on-line searchable form.
• Given the ease of producing downloadable versions of data files, CCDB managers should be encouraged to make these available, even when an on-line database exists.
• Incompleteness of the data sets should not necessarily be an obstacle to making DBs accessible on-line although the reliability and accuracy of data are clearly important.
• The desirability of using the multicrop descriptor list when establishing an on-line presence was underlined.
• At no cost, NGB and ZADI are willing to implement temporarily an on-line database for any CCDBs that require this service.
• It was recommended that data output from on-line databases should be decoded in full to their equivalent full text values. However, for data exchange, coded data should be used, preferably using the multicrop descriptor lists.
• It was stressed once more the importance of the use of and access to code standards like ISO country codes and institute codes (FAO codes and ECP acronyms). Problems of intellectual property with ISO codes are to be cleared. The existence of different versions of FAO's Institute codes on IPGRI's and ZADI's servers should be rectified.
• Problems that occur when data are exchanged with different character sets were discussed but no satisfactory solutions could be agreed upon.
• After discussion it was agreed that ECPGR will provide an Internet Entry Page for each ECCDB following the amended format (see Appendix 9).
• It was agreed that the meeting was a great opportunity for database managers and others involved in documentation of PGR to interact on the technical level.

Evaluation

Note: An anonymous evaluation form was distributed at the end of the meeting in order to generate feedback for further meetings. Eleven completed forms were received.

• The organization of the workshop was evaluated very positively. 75% of participants felt the length of the workshop was sufficient and not too long, the remainder were split between too long and too short.
• The content of the workshop was evaluated positively in general. The order of the agenda and balance between discussions and presentations were generally well received and helpful suggestions were received for their improvement, such as better structuring the discussions etc.
• The quality of the presentations was considered very high.
• There was a consensus on the usefulness of the workshop.
• A number of participants indicated that the workshop could have contained more practical activities, e.g. how to establish an Internet connection, improve a database, software and hardware issues.
• The participants believe that their participation in the workshop will strongly speed up the process of providing on-line access to a downloadable version of their database.
• The process of getting searchable databases on-line was also considered in most cases (all but two) to be accelerated considerably by attending the workshop.