[ecoinfo] Metacat 1.3.0 Release Announcement

Jing Tao tao at nceas.ucsb.edu
Thu Jul 31 16:08:32 PDT 2003


The Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity project (http://knb.ecoinformatics.org) 
is pleased to announce its new release of Metacat (1.3.0). Metacat is a 
flexible database storage system for XML formatted documents. In this release, the
main new feature is that it can support EML 2 documents. Please
see the attached README file for more new features and details.

Source code is available for Linux (RedHat 7.2 to 9.0), Unix and
Windows 2000/XP - see the software download page
(http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/download.html#metacat).

We would welcome any input or suggestions (email metacat-dev at
ecoinformatics.org).

-- 
Jing Tao
National Center for Ecological
Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
735 State St. Suite 204
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
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#  '$RCSfile: README,v $'
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#     '$Date: 2003/07/31 01:33:37 $'
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Metacat: XML Metadata Database
------------------------------

Version: 1.3.0 Release

Send feedback and bugs to: metacat-dev at ecoinformatics.org
                           http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org

Contributors: Matt Jones (jones at nceas.ucsb.edu)
              Chad Berkley (berkley at nceas.ucsb.edu)
              Jing Tao (tao at nceas.ucsb.edu)
              Jivka Bojilova (bojilova at nceas.ucsb.edu)
              Dan Higgins (higgins at nceas.ucsb.edu)

Metacat is a flexible database storage system for XML formatted
documents. Metacat models the structure of the XML document, therefore
allowing storage of XML documents with arbitrary schemas. Metacat supports
several databases on the back-end, including Oracle, PostgreSQL and SQL
Server.  The server supports XML document storage, retrievel, query,
validation, and transformation (using the XSLT stylesheet language).
In addition, there is a mechanism for replicating the database
to other metacat instances for backup and load balancing purposes.
Metacat currently uses an LDAP database for authenticating users, but
was written to accomodate other authentication services as well.

Release Notes

In this release, the structure of the xml_access table was changed and a new
table, xml_accesssubtree was added. If you try to update a previously 
installed Metacat, you should run a script file to updated the table structure 
before installation.
For Oracle user: At the SQLPLUS prompt type the following -
@src/reviseformetacat13.sql
For Postgresql user: At install directory prompt type the following -
psql exp < src/reviseformetacat13_postgres.sql
(where 'exp' is the database name).

After installation, user should run "ant schemasql" command to register EML2
schema in xml_catalog table.

If you are a new Metacat user, this step is unneeded.

Note: 1) We recommend to use Tomcat 4 and JAVA 1.4 to run Metacat. Otherwise, 
         it will cause potential replication issues.
      2) Delete the xercesImpl.jar and xmlParserAPIs.jar files 
         which are in $CATALINA_HOME/common/endorsed. They are old version and
         don't support XML schema validation.

New Features in 1.3.0
  1) Partialy support EML2 document. User can store, query, read and write
     EML2 documents. However, Metacat only support access control in resource
     level. The subtree level access control will be ignored.
  2) Support other xml document base on namespace/schema.
  3) Support query for attribute value
  4) Assign MIME type to data file base on metadata when user try to read it.
  5) Owner can assign access rules to a document which does not have access 
     document to apply it.
  6) Support exporting single file, not only whole package
  7) Resupport Microsoft SQL Server.

Fixes in 1.3.0:
  1) Couldn't finish delta T replication for large set of documents.
  2) Couldn't create access control during delta T replication.
  3) Eorr will be written to a seperated log file if some documents
     were failed in replication.
  4) Decrease the time to create access rules during insert or update 
     a package.
     
Installation
------------
See the file "docs/user/metacatinstall.html" for detailed instructions.

Documentation
-------------
See the docs directory for detailed documentation and installation
instructions.

Details of the Metacat architecture can be found on the website for
the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB):

  http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/metacat/

Contributions to this work are welcome.  Please see the above web site
for details on how to contribute.

Major Known Bugs or Feature Requests (see http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you discover a bug
please report it, either by email (above) or by using our bug tracking
system (http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org). There is a list of currently
unimplemented features in Bugzilla that we are working on for the next
release (no, we don't have a date yet!).

Legalese
--------
This software is copyrighted by The Regents of the University of California
and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
and licensed under the GNU GPL; see the 'LICENSE' file for
details.

This material is based upon work supported by the
National Science Foundation under Grant No. DEB99-80154 and DBI99-04777.
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this
material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect
the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

This product includes software developed by the Apache Software
Foundation (http://www.apache.org/). See the LICENSE file in lib/apache
for details.

The source code, object code, and documentation in the com.oreilly.servlet
package is copyright and owned by Jason Hunter. See the cos-license.html file
for details of the license.  Licensor retains title to and ownership of the
Software and all enhancements, modifications, and updates to the Software.


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