Road map: history and future plans

• April 2004: Unification of DiGIR and BioCASe was considered a priority during the GBIF DADI sub-committee meeting in Oaxaca.

• June 2004: GBIF commissioned a study that resulted in the original integration proposal.

• October 2004: Original proposal was presented during the TDWG meeting in Christchurch.

• May 2005: First reference implementation of a TAPIR data provider (PyWrapper).

• November 7th to 11th, 2005: TAPIR meeting to review the protocol (new version of the XML Schema available).

• January, 2006: New set of changes incorporated in the protocol schema to address a few open issues that were left after the meeting. First attempt of a protocol feature freeze. See: http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-tapir_lists.tdwg.org/2005-December/000096.html

• April 2006: First TDWG TAG meeting requested study about the viability of using ontologies in TAPIR.

• May, 2006: TDWG contracted TAPIR documentation work, which will include a charter, a formal specification and a user guide.

• May, 2006: TAPIR charter finished. See: http://www.tdwg.org/subgroups/tapir/charter/

• May, 2006: Changes in TAPIR metadata response to make use of DublinCore?, VCard and GeoRSS? elements. See: http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-tapir_lists.tdwg.org/2006-May/000208.html

• June, 2006: IPGRI is now funding the PyWrapper update to support the latest version of the protocol.

• June/July, 2006: Initial study about the possibility of making TAPIR compliant with ontologies and consequently improve output model mappings (See: SemanticMapping). The other possibility would be to drop dynamic output models (See: DroppingDynamicOutputModels). Although TDWG is already working on a general ontology, it will probably take some time until a stable and accepted ontology is defined. Decision was to postpone related changes in the protocol to a future version.

• July, 2006: Adjustments made in the protocol during the PyWrapper update. See ImplementationAndDocumentationChanges.

• September, 2006: PyWrapper adapted to the new version of TAPIR.

• September, 2006: PyWrapper Config Tool adapted to TAPIR.

• October, 2006: Formal specification finished. See: http://www.tdwg.org/dav/subgroups/tapir/1.0/docs/

• October, 2006: Release of the first official version of the protocol (1.0).

• October, 2006: TAPIR approved as an official TDWG Task Group (as part of the TDWG Architecture Interest Group).

• January, 2007: Minor changes suggested during the implementation of TapirLink (see: http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-tapir/2007-January/000316.html).

• January, 2007: Second TAPIR provider implementation available: TapirLink.

• February, 2007: TAPIR developers workshop (see TapirWorkshop2007).

• April, 2007: TAPIR Executive Summary finished.

• June, 2007: TAPIR Network Builders' Guide finished.

• 18th July, 2007: First TAPIR service indexed by GBIF: Type collection of mollusca fossils from the Cenozoic of Java, Indonesia, and deposited in the Naturalis National Museum of Natural History, Netherlands (TAPIR service hosted by ETI BioInformatics?).

• August, 2007: Third TAPIR provider implementation available: TapirDotNET.

• September, 2007: TAPIR promotional video available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9404is3RJ8

• December, 2007: TAPIR provider conformance tests available: TapirTester

• December, 2007: First client library available: TapirChirp (PHP)

• July, 2008: Online builders for output models and query templates: TapirBuilder

• December, 2008: Second client library available: TapirJChirp (Java)

• 5th February, 2009: Specification submitted to the TDWG Standards Track.

• 27th July, 2009: All peer-reviews recommended acceptance.

• 10th September, 2009: Approved by the TDWG executive committee. Started the public review process.

• 13th November, 2009: TAPIR 1.0 approved as an official TDWG standard.