On this page you will find information about the AIDA PC Database, including a downloadable version. AIDA PC is an MS Access 2000 application for the management of simple information on humanitarian development project.
The AIDA PC Database can export data to XML files that are compliant with the International Development Markup Language (IDML). IDML is an XML Schema for the exchange of development related information.
The AIDA PC Database was designed and implemented by Stefan Huesemann(University of Fribourg, Switzerland) in close cooperation with the Mark Waser (Development Gateway, Washington DC, USA). Please contact us to give feed-back and report errors.
What is the purpose of the database?
What are the functionalities of AIDA PC?
What are the system requirements to install AIDA PC?
Who is the database for?
The project database is intended to be used by organizations who don’t have a database to manage their project information. It is specially suited for organizations that are active in humanitarian development projects.
What is the purpose of the database?
The database is designed to manage simple project information on development activities. The exchange of project information within or between organizations is substantially facilitated by the database. The main purpose of the database is to help organizations to upload data to AIDA or any other similar system without using a WWW interface and without knowledge of XML. The application is not a project management software.
What are the functionalities or AIDA PC?
- The database (DB) can be used locally by any organization that wants to track project information.
- The DB provides a graphical user interface for entering data manually.
- Information in the DB is conform with the International Development Markup Language (IDML) core activity schema.
- Data in the DB can be exported to an XML-file that is in a valid IDML format.
- The database can be used by the organization to upload data to AIDA.
- The database model can be extended to meet the information requirements of the organization, but the original tables and attribute names cannot be changed.
- Download and import of data from AIDA or any IDML compliant source. (This feature includes a synchronization tool to compare the information changed on both sides since the last update. The process for synchronization has been discussed at the AIDA core working group in May 2001).
Future functionalities:
- Provide a set of XSL style sheets to convert and present project data in HTML.
- Extend the database model to be used for project reporting purposes: personalized reports could be extracted then.
What are the system requirements to install AIDA PC?
To run the project information database you need the following infrastructure and software:
- A PC with Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000 (or later)
- Microsoft Access 2000 (or later)
- About 20 Mb of free hard disk space
AIDA Downloads
Title |
Description |
Last update |
| AIDA PC Database (version 1.1) | Download of the AIDA PC database. (requires Access 2000 or later)(3.5Mb) |
Nov. 1 2004 |
| Information Exchange between Humanitarian Organizations: Using the XML Schema IDML (Journal of the AIS) [ Article PDF ] (2.7 MB) |
This Journal article explains how XML-based information exchange between autonomous information systems work. It presents rules for deriving relational database models from XML Schemas. AIDA PC and the International Development Markup Language (IDML) is used to illustrate the theory. | May 15 2002 |
| AIDA PC Description | This is a documents that explains how the AICA PC Database is designed and implemented. (Word document, 34Kb) |
Oct. 23 2002 |
| AIDA PC Overview | This document gives a one page overview of the functionalities of the AIDA PC Database and lists the installation requirements. (Word document, 20Kb) |
Oct. 23 2002 |
| AIDA PC import module with DOM | This report explains the AIDA PC import module that was implemented by Fabio Patocchi. The Document Object Model DOM is explained and then used to program the Access DB module that enables AIDA PC to import IDML files and synchronize the projects in the file with the ones in the project database. (PDF, 320 KB) |
Nov. 23 2002 |
| XMLizer | XMLizer is a mapping tool that allows you to map XML schemas to any relational database. The mapping rules that the user defines are used by the XMLizer web-server to generate XML documents. XMLizer allows to call dynamically generated XML documents over the WWW.
This freeware was programmed by Thomas Schädler in cooperation with Stefan Hüsemann. XMLizer can for instance be used to make IDML documents accessible over the Internet. |
Jan. 27 2003 |