1. Objectives of ViroTica-Db : database on European ressources and centres of activity ➢ To provide an on-line European database linked to existing web sites and databases ➢ Centres of activity ranked according to strengths and weaknesses : ➢ Universities and research organisations : research publications, patents, citations, ph.D. theses, awards ➢ Companies : patents, licence agreement, etc. ➢ Which scientists/organisations are publishing with which other scientists/organisations in ViroTica field ➢ Will remain operational after 2007

2. ViroTica-Db Which data do you want to find ? ➢ A complete, accurate, up-to-date panorama ➢ Useful data about actors, research activities and tools ● Structures ● Persons ● Research topics... titles and descriptions ● Research results... many types of results ● Available tools to use in breeding programs

3. ViroTica-Db Which data do you want to find ? ➢ Annotated data ● Set of scoring criteria adapted to types of activities ●... data to register or to calculate ? ➢ Public and protected data ● Which boundary between public and protected data ? ● Protected access to some columns and/or some rows ? ● Specific rights for each member ? ● Delivery of accounts and passwords

4. ViroTica-Db Which requests ? ➢ Retrieved data ● Arrays/lists of data having the same type ● Columns : default choice or selection by user ● Rows : sorted or not ● Pages with all data on one object ➢ Criteria of requests ● Content of searchable fields ● Key words ● Complicated requests : combination of simple requests

5. ViroTica-Db Structured and controlled vocabularies ➢ Lists of allowed vocabularies (words or expressions) ● One list by type of data : viruses, vectors, plants, diseases, genetic resistances, biological processes, cellular components, molecular functions,... ● Structured : ● parent-child relationship ● synonyms ➢ Use of open ontologies when available : OBO... ➢ Specific ViroTica lists of controlled vocabularies

6. ViroTica-Db Proposal for languages policy ➢ English : ● Language by default ● All data must be translated in english ➢ Other languages : ● Data registered with Unicode® UTF-8 encoding standard ● The user may choose his prefered language ● If available, data are edited in that language Else, data are edited in english ● High rate of (checked ?) translation for a few languages ?

7. ViroTica-Db Data validation ➢ Does the database display only validated data ? or both validated and unvalidated data ? ➢ Who validates ? ● One or several scientists ? ➢ How to validate ? ● Mail ? ● On line validation interface ? ➢ How to mark validated data ? ● Fields for validation date ?

8. ViroTica-Db Origin of data ➢ Initial loading : questionnaires ● European centres of activity ● Research topics ● Research results ● Tools to control viruses and vectors ➢ Updating the database ● Same questionnaires ● On line interface ?