Thanks, Jeff.
Those are important points. We definitely have to keep them in mind as we
go. My idea for now is to develop the framework in which the tools
themselves will operate while we continue our investigation of the myriad
of geospatial metadata standards. My concern is that we are spending
nearly all our time trying to understand the details of these standards and
we need to begin getting some hands-on experience with the process of
building tools that will create usable metadata in environments where there
are 10 products a second flowing into the servers.
With that in mind, I have two quick questions regarding your suggestion:
-- Is there a mapping between the standards you suggest and the NSDL DC-Ed
recommendation?
-- Are you aware of cases where groups have defined how the fields would be
used for the datasets I listed in my earlier message?
But let me emphasize that overall I agree with you that we need to address
the question of these more detailed geospatial metadata standards before we
make any of this work more "public" where it takes on a life of its own.
-- Ben
--On Friday, December 21, 2001 12:40 PM -0500 Jeff de La Beaujardiere
<delabeau@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ben Domenico writes:
# We are aware of the detailed standards of the FGDC, GCMD, those
# evolving at ISO as well as the ESML definition at UAH. [...]
# But, as a place to get started and gain some experience with the
# metadata generation tools themselves, we're looking for something
# simpler
The danger in choosing something simpler "to get started" is that once
chosen it is very difficult to get rid of.
# http://www.smete.org/nsdl/workgroups/standards/current_element_set.html
This appears only to address educational documents or modules, not
datasets. Perhaps that is all you need, but you also wrote:
# In particular, we plan to start with the types of data found on many
# THREDDS servers:
# -- gridded data output from weather forecast models,
# -- GOES satellite imagery, NEXRAD level 3 images, and
# -- point source weather observations and balloon soundings from
# weather stations
# -- climate data
I recommend you consider whether a subset of FGDC CSDGM or ISO 19115
would meet your needs for dataset description. Only some of the fields
therein are required. See <http://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/contstan.html>.
Note also that specifications like the OGC Web Map Service have explicit
support for linking to FGDC or ISO metadata, and that the Office of
Management and Budget's e-government "Geospatial One-Stop" initiative
will be using FGDC metadata.
Regards,
Jeff DLB
Dr Jeff de La Beaujardiere * Computer Scientist
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center * Code 933
delabeau@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx * +1 301 286 1569
http://iniki.gsfc.nasa.gov/
--MAA93115.1008956153/iniki.gsfc.nasa.gov--
