CDS ISIS

CDS/ISIS is a software package for generalised "Information Storage and Retrieval systems" developed, maintained and disseminated by UNESCO. It was first released in 1985 and since then over 20,000 licences have been issued by UNESCO and a worldwide network of distributors. It is particularly suited to bibliographical applications and is used for the catalogues of many small and medium-sized libraries. Versions have been produced in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish amongst other languages. UNESCO makes the software available free for non-commercial purposes, though distributors are allowed to charge for their expenses.

CDS/ISIS is an acronmym which stands for Computerised Documentation Service / Integrated Set of Information Systems. In 2003 it was stated that "This package is accepted by libraries in the developing countries as a standard software for information system development". [ National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka. "CDS ISIS Library Software" [Last Update 10th January 2003.] http://www.nsf.ac.lk/slstic/isis.htm Accessed June 20, 2007.]

The original CDS/ISIS ran on an IBM mainframe and was designed in the mid 1970s under Mr Giampaolo Del Bigio for UNESCO's Computerized Documentation System (CDS). It was based on the internal ISIS (Integrated Set of Information Systems) at the International Labour Organization in Geneva.

In 1985 a version was produced for mini- and microcomputers programmed in Pascal. It ran on an IBM PC under MS-DOS [Buxton, Andrew and Hopkinson, Alan. "The CDS/ISIS handbook". London: Library Association, 1994] . "Winisis", the Windows version, first demonstrated in 1995, may run on a single computer or in a local area network. The "JavaISIS" client/server components allow remote database management over the Internet and are available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh. Furthermore, "GenISIS" allows the user to produce HTML Web forms for CDS/ISIS database searching. The "ISIS_DLL" provides an API for developing CDS/ISIS based applications. OpenIsis library provides another API for developing CDS/ISIS based applications with some improvements.

See also

* IDAMS - Statistical Software
* IDIS is a tool for direct data exchange between CDS/ISIS and IDAMS.
* OpenIsis the opensource alternative for CDS/ISIS.

External links

* [http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=2071&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html CDS/ISIS database software (UNESCO)]
* [https://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/cds-isis.html Archives of [e-mail]]
* http://openisis.org/
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/isis
* [http://pecl.php.net/package/isis PHP extension for reading CDS/ISIS databases]

References