In this presentation we will demonstrate the capabilities of the BEXIS 2 software in managing heterogeneous biodiversity data. BEXIS is being developed to address the data management needs of large scale research projects with multiple sub-projects and several hundred researchers. Following the data life cycle management concept, BEXIS 2 provides modules for data collection, data discovery, dissemination, integration, quality assurance and research planning. Key features of the BEXIS 2 system include support for a broad range of data structures and data types; multiple database management systems (e.g. PostgreSQL, IBM DB2); a faceted search on metadata and primary data; dataset versioning; individual metadata schemas (according to metadata standards); customizable data downloads; and a highly flexible security system (incl. single sign-on). Currently, we strive to significantly improve the usability and performance of the system. New features are being developed based on requests from the user community and released every three months under a GNU Lesser General Public License (version 3).

The development of BEXIS 2 is an interdisciplinary collaboration of ecologists, geoscientists and computer scientists from the University of Jena, the University of Göttingen, the Technical University Munich, the Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena, and the  Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen (GWDG). The development is being funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG) as part of the BExIS++ project (http://fusion.cs.uni-jena.de/bexis). Funding for specific extensions and modules is further provided by DFG through the projects: Biodiversity Exploratories (http://www.biodiversity-exploratories.de/1/home/), AquaDiva (http://www.aquadiva.uni-jena.de/), iDiv (https://www.idiv.de/), and GFBio (http://www.gfbio.org/).