We are developing a collaborative workgroup environment that combines name management tools within a distributed framework that can be used with multiple taxonomic systems. These tools will provide a simple management interface to the nomenclature and classification elements of TNS. This includes tools for rapidly indexing and importing checklists, drag and drop interfaces for managing taxonomic metadata and authentication schemes for security and attribution. We are currently developing applications within this environment for Windows, Mac OSX and OS9 platforms.

The architecture is structured to provide a system that is:

• Distributed  - Multiple, disconnected copies can operate independently, sharing and synchronizing information explicitly or implicitly.
• Standards Compliant – The object layering of TNS and NameBank makes support of existing or emerging standards transparent
• Extensible –Services are build using an object oriented model optimized for client/server interaction.  Applications can be built on this service layer without requiring knowledge of the underlying technology
• Secure – Maintaining ownership at the Name level allows, modification, tracking and inheritance to be controlled and audited.
• Fair and Consistent – Name creation and the manner that identification tokens are assigned allows movement of information to maintain its thread of accountability, even across distributed boundaries
• Fault Tolerant – The event base capabilities provide a major secondary benefit.  Faulty changes and losses can be rolled back on a per name, per user, per time basis
• Event-based – The contextual information provides meta-data that can be used to generate triggers.  This allows users to utilize subscription based events, rather than repetitive searches to identify relevant changes in data
• Technology-independent – The architecture is layered on existing object oriented and relational database structures.  Changing the underlying storage system will not affect the operation of TNS.
• International – Every textual piece of information introduced into NameBank is maintained in the native language and encoding.