This FAQ provides information for Network programs about the upcoming transition to Biotics 6. This article will be updated with new information as we receive and respond to new questions. Please Follow this page to be notified of updates and return often to catch up on new content, and please provide us with your unanswered questions.
| Question | Answer |
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| Where will Biotics 6 be hosted? | Biotics 6 will transition hosting from NatureServe’s secure data center to Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS offers multiple Availability Zones in the US and Canada. At this time, we are planning on designing a solution that supports deployment across multiple regions, e.g. to allow for Canadian instances to be hosted within an AWS Canada region and for US instances to be hosted within an AWS US region. |
| Will the database architecture change? | Yes. Biotics 6 will migrate the database from Oracle to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. |
| Will the GIS architecture change? | Yes. Biotics 6 will upgrade to ArcGIS Enterprise 11.X with a federated portal hosting shared GIS services. At this time, we are evaluating both the traditional Windows deployment of ArcGIS Enterprise as well as the Linux-based, cloud-native Kubernetes deployment to determine which version is most performant and cost effective. |
| Is there anything else changing in Biotics 6? | The ArcGIS upgrade provides the opportunity to modernize the Biotics map interface, although the new map will not yet support creating and editing features on the map. Both the old map and new map will be available until the new map is completed. Biotics 5 uses an older version of NatureServe’s map core, built on the ArcGIS API for JavaScript 3.X. Our newer map core is built on the ArcGIS API for JavaScript 4.X, examples of which are found in Explorer Pro and newer installations of the Environmental Review Tool. There are a few changes to accessing the database and rotating passwords. That guidance can be found in this documentation.
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| When will Biotics 6 be ready? | Rollout to Biotics 6 will begin October 1, 2026 and will run through the end of December 2026. |
| When can my program expect to upgrade? | The Biotics 6 Rollout Schedule is posted here. If that date does not work for your program, please submit this form indicating the date does not work for you. |
| Will my program’s extensible tables, custom tables, and views be converted? | Yes. We have provided programs with spreadsheets with your custom tables, views, and other custom objects for your review prior to your conversion. You will need to let us know which tables/views are still being used. We may ask you to delete any test views and tables that are not being used so that we are not converting unnecessary objects. Please see this Help Desk Solution to help you in filling out these spreadsheets. |
| Will my custom Crystal Reports work after the database is migrated to Postgres? | Yes, Crystal Reports will work with Postgres, but there will be work needed to update the connections to the database and some manual work will be needed. Please see the documentation on Updating Crystal Reports from Biotics 5 ro Biotics 6. |
| Is there anything that I can begin doing now to prepare for conversion? | The most important thing for you to do is to make sure you complete your Conversion Spredsheets. |
| Will there be a sandbox or a test site that I can access prior to the conversion that I can test my queries and views against? If so, when. | We have converted Biotics Pilot to Biotics 6. If you would like access to this database, please submit a ticket to the Help Desk. If you need additional access, please also submit a ticket. |
| Will PostGIS be used for spatial data types? | Yes. |
| What tools are being used/evaluated to migrate from Oracle to Postgres? | We are currently planning to use the AWS Schema Conversion Tool and Data Migration Service. |
| Will bulk import, SQL scripts, or other tools used for Observations Surveys, be upgraded? | Generally, NatureServe authored scripts that still need to be used, will get updated. However, these types of external utilities would likely get addressed near the end of the conversion process once the primary database and application conversions are complete or nearly complete. |
| Is the Central database going to be updated instantly? | No, we will use the same process to convert all databases. |
| Will Kiteworks continue to be the platform for downloading backups? | AWS has a super fast but proprietary backup system that only works for restoring backups into another AWS database. But for programs that need to stand up local copies, then a more traditional pg_dump/pg_restore backup we will continue to provide this backup on Kiteworks. |
| Will Biotics 6 be capable of adding non-Latin Indigenous characters? In Biotics5 (Oracle), unicode could be implemented incrementally in either the UTF-16 or UTF-8 encoding form in SQL NCHAR datatypes, however, I believe this update to Biotics6 makes things easier? I believe that Postgres does support Unicode. I want to confirm whether Biotics 6 will be configured to store data in Unicode's standard encodings. | Yes, Biotics 6 will be capable of storing non-Latin Indigenous characters, and it will support Unicode via UTF-8, which is the default character encoding in PostgreSQL. In contrast to Biotics 5 (which used Oracle and could implement Unicode support incrementally via
As long as the application layer (user interface, import/export tools, etc.) also handles UTF-8 properly — which Biotics 6 is designed to do — users should be able to input, store, and display Indigenous characters without issue. |
| We will have the same back-end access capabilities in Biotics 6 that we have with Biotics 5, albeit in Postgres instead of Oracle, correct? | Yes, the intention is that you will have the same back-end capabilities in Biotics 6 as in Biotics 5. We have documented how to connect to the Postgres database here. |