The Data Centre Nature and Landscape, intended as a database for biotope information, constantly evolved over the last 11 years to become a virtual data centre connecting several databases located all over Switzerland. It was enriched with a user-friendly Web-interface, partially modularized into a Service Oriented Architecture and finally offers open and intuitive search facilities based on semantic technologies. This paper shall give an overview of the hurdles that had to be taken and the many lessons to be learned during the last decade sharing our experience developing and maintaining environmental information systems.