review of complete GCE eml implementation requested

[Wade Sheldon]

David, Matt and Peter,

OK, I believe I've finally achieved nearly complete expression of all existing GCE metadata content in EML 2.0.0, so I'm ready to call it done (pending changes prompted by your review). In addition to finishing the eml scripts I also generated physical files corresponding to each dataTable description and added them to our catalog, so we now have both comprehensive EML 2.0.0-compliant metadata and corresponding data tables fully deployed on the web for all current and future GCE data sets.

To fill in the remaining holes, I added the following new sections:

1) study descriptors (i.e. plot layouts, overall sampling scheme, statistical design) added as eml/dataset/project/designDescription/... to augment the overall project descriptors (I missed that element before, which nicely solves my problem of accommodating this info)

2) complete post-processing description added as eml/dataset/dataTable/method/..., including a complete software description of the GCE Data Toolbox, detailed substeps listing the auto-generated processing history (i.e. lineage) from the toolbox, and a QA/QC protocol description that references the toolbox info as well (note that I'm still using eml/dataset/methods/... to describe the overall research methodology)

3) a direct download url for the data table in the format described in the doc added as eml/dataset/dataTable/physical/distribution/online/url (this url hooks into our download registration web app -- requests for files that aren't available to the public due to release date restrictions bounce to an error page containing a special data request email form)

I also policed all our existing attribute descriptors and corrected a number of mistakes so all attributes will map properly to eml (e.g. missing code lists in coded attributes, coded attributes listed as nominal, floating-point columns with discrete data types, etc.). I finished re-processing and re-versioning all our existing data sets to synchronize all these changes and also to instantiate QA/QC flag columns so they'll be documented in the metadata database, and therefore properly picked up as coded attributes in eml (in the past the data set summaries only listed the primary data columns but ASCII distributables occasionally included instantiated alphanumeric or integer-encoded flag columns which were listed in the inline metadata -- now that I'm generating eml live from the database I need to accommodate those flag columns in the database when they exist in the ASCII data table. It also will provide more complete information to anyone looking at the data set summary pages).

I'm attaching 3 representative docs for your review. All of them validate fine using XMLSpy and the ecoinformatics.org validator. You can also view eml with this level of detail for any data set in our catalog using the 'Detailed GCE Metadata in EML 2.0 format' link.

Thanks for the comments you've provided so far. I provided a lot of hooks in this system that will let me use this eml request script as a front-end for requesting custom data tables as well, which will allow me to easily wrap all this as a web service and expose it on a grid in the future.

Regards,

Wade Sheldon


___________________________________________________________

 Wade M. Sheldon
 Management Information Specialist
 Department of Marine Sciences
 University of Georgia
 Athens, GA  30602-3636
 http://gce-lter.marsci.uga.edu/lter/bios/wsheldon.htm

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."  -- Douglas Adams
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