The Environmental and Ecological Science Data Center for West China, sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, is a data sharing portal serving environmental and ecological studies in West China. The overall architecture of this data center will be firstly presented, followed by an introduction of its technical implementation schema, development pattern and underlying database design. Key functional components including adopted metadata standard, knowledge data linkage, and data cataloguing and navigation are examined in detail. This data center is technically designed, leveraging advanced Web and GIS technologies, to meet five principles which are refined upon reviewing existing data centers and considered being important for a successful data center, i.e., easy to find, easy to use, easy to manage, planning for future and highlighting services. Full and open data sharing is technically guaranteed wherever data policy is permitted to share. Finally, the integration among data centers and the issues of modeling services are discussed.