Notice March 2009
=================

With the release of LexEVS 5.0 (scheduled for June 2009) the EVS team will discontinue publication of the Apelon Ontylog XML file. LexEVS 5.0 will rely exclusively on the Mayo LexBIG technology (http://informatics.mayo.edu/LexGrid) and we will no longer be licensing the proprietary Apelon Ontylog DTS software.

We encourage you to begin using NCI Thesaurus in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/).  If you have questions or concerns about the retirement of the Ontylog format, please email us at ncicb@pop.nci.nih.gov.

To remain consistent with our historical practice of running only the previous version of the EVS technology stack in deprecation, the EVS team will be retiring the EVS 3.x caCORE APIs and the EVS 3.x Grid Services at the release of LexEVS 5.0 (scheduled for June 2009).  The DTS Terminology Server and Metaphrase Server will be decommissioned as they are replaced by the LexBIG terminology server as the underlying terminology server for EVS.  Additionally the NCI Terminology Browser will be decommissioned and replaced with two browsers: NCI BioPortal and the new NCIt Browser.  The NCI Metathesuarus browser will be retired and replaced with a new NCI Metathesaurus Browser.  

If you have not done so already we encourage you to begin planning your migration path to utilize a version later than 3.x of the EVS APIs and
Grid Service, at the minimum EVS 4.1.  Below is a list of EVS products that will be decommissioned at the release of EVS 5.0.


Retired Product/Version    Tentative Decommission Date	Current
Replacement Product/Version    
EVS 3.x caCORE API         June 2009                	Lexevsapi 4.2 or
higher 
EVS 3.x Grid Service       June 2009                	EVS Grid Service 4.2
or higher 
DTS Terminology Server     June 2009               	LexBig Terminology
Server
      
NCI Metathesaurus Browser (http://ncimeta.nci.nih.gov) will be maintained until a new NCI Metathesaurus Browser is released.

NCI Terminology Browser (http://nciterms.nci.nih.gov ) will be retired in June 2009 but will be replaced by the multiple-vocabulary browser Bioportal (http://bioportal.nci.nih.gov) and a new NCI Thesaurus specific browser that will be ready before the deprecation date.
                       
If you have questions or concerns about the retirement of the NCI Terminology Browser or NCI Metathesaurus Browser please email us at ncicb@pop.nci.nih.gov.  For details regarding retirement for the EVS 3.x technology, and for up-to-date schedules and plans, browse here http://ncicb.nci.nih.gov/NCICB/infrastructure/cacore_overview/vocabulary or e-mail us at NCIEVS-L@LIST.NIH.GOV