The Worm Community System, Release 2.0 (WCSr2)

This chapter discusses that the Worm Community System (WCS) is a digital library that contains knowledge about Caenorhabditis elegans and a software environment that enables the user to interact with the community library across the international computer network, the Internet. The functions of the software environment enable the user to browse, search, and retrieve the existing knowledge of the community. This chapter provides a survey of the system's history, features, and requirements, and describes the basic uses of the system. It focuses on the second version, WCSr2, funded by National Science Foundation (NSF). As a tool, WCSr2 complements A Caenorhabditis elegans Data Base (ACeDB). Although WCSr2 and ACeDB are both hypermedia-based biological databases, they differ in a number of ways. WCSr2 is a community system. It allows interactive creation and editing of new objects by end users within the system. It also supports editorial and privacy controls, allowing users to restrict access to data and to determine how reliable a particular piece of data is. While ACeDB distributes its database with the software; WCSr2 has client-server architecture with a central database. This allows all users immediate access to new data, instead of relying on periodic updates of the database.