"Metacat, a server-side data management software, is the engine running the N2O network data portal. The IT platform underlying of the data portal is KNB Metacat. Metacat is a community-driven data repository that was specifically developed to store ecological research data. It has a built-in web interface to search and download ecological data. Metacat has been successfully deployed at a number of ecological research sites around the world.Data stored in Metacat will comply with an N2O data protocol that is largely based on those of ICASA (International Consortium for Agricultural Systems Applications) standards. The protocol specifies data collection methods, the parameters required for each dataset and what additional descriptions (metadata) are expected.Ecologists interact with Metacat by using Morpho. Morpho is a software assistant to add critical metadata to research data collection and annotate datasets. It also helps track new versions of the data and to upload the latest version of the datasets to the repository."