This project will gather the results of two prototype projects developed at Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB), one of ISTEC's founding members, since 1994, where a distributed database for ISTEC was first formulated. The ISTEC database project is currently conceived as a means of structuring, storing, maintaining, and querying all the relevant information of the consortium. To facilitate access to this database, a web-based interface system must be designed and implemented. This will allow remote and uniform interaction from any member institution to the database. In other words, the applications that use the database for query and update, will be accessed through the web. Therefore, this project is tightly related to the next project in which we define a Portal for Science and Technology in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula.

To give a sense of what are the tasks involved in this effort and to provide a current status of development, we summarize the database activities. The conceptual database model designed at USB for ISTEC is being refined, according to the information needs of the personnel that works at the Executive Office and the opinions of several member institutions through their representatives. Then the appropriate software to implement the database and its applications must be selected. After completing the conceptual model refinement, the logical and physical models of the database are produced and implemented. The applications that control the integrity of the data and use the database must be designed in parallel to the logical and physical design and later implemented. Finally, the actual data must be loaded into the database structures in order to make it available for its authorized use.

For the success and long life of this database, it is crucial that the data contained in it be well maintained and cared for. This requires both a technical infrastructure and an information culture within the consortium which must be built with the database.