Fwd: electronic tagging data base

wmichene@lternet.edu wmichene at lternet.edu
Thu Feb 5 05:50:29 PST 2004


Thanks Matt,

This is good advice.  There should be many opportunities to make Morpho work 
for a broad range of communities, especially with 3 new marine LTER sites 
being added, the continuing evolution of PISCO, and the likely engagement of 
NSF/GEO, NOAA & NMFS, and SIO in the new planned observatories (NEON, ORION, 
etc.).

Best regards,

Bill Michener

Quoting Matt Jones <jones at nceas.ucsb.edu>:

> Hi Bill, John, and others,
> 
> Personally, I think they should definitely interact with us at NCEAS due
> 
> to our role in developing Morpho and EML, and they very well might get a
> 
> lot out of contacting PISCO because of the similarity in usage of Morpho
> 
> within PISCO.  I think the LTER has a lot to add regarding EML usage, 
> and may also have good insight into Morpho as time passes.  Probably the
> 
> best way to contact the right knowledgeable people is to write to 
> 'morpho-dev at ecoinformatics.org' for Morpho questions and 
> 'eml-dev at ecoinformatics.org' for EML questions.  Both lists contain a 
> mix of people from NCEAS, PISCO, LTER, and other sites who will be 
> responsive to PFRP's quesitons and needs.
> 
> I've put some comments below in John's email to try and answer some of
> 
> his initial questions.   Let me know if you'd like further
> clarifications.
> 
> Matt
> 
> *********************************************************************
> * Matt Jones
> * National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
> * UC Santa Barbara
> * 907-789-0496             jones at nceas.ucsb.edu
> *********************************************************************
> 
> wmichene at lternet.edu wrote:
> 
> > Matt and James,
> > 
> > The PFRP is very much interested in eml&Morpho for pelagic fisheries
> data.  As 
> > you can see from the message below, they are interested in points of
> contact 
> > for examining extensibility of morpho for specific needs. 
> > 
> > Would it be best for them to interact with NCEAS, PISCO, LTER, or all
> of the 
> > above?  
> > 
> > Note that I have cc'd the director of the program in this message, so
> you may 
> > respond directly to all.
> > 
> > thanks for your input!
> > 
> > Bill
> > 
> > 
> > ----- Forwarded message from John Sibert <sibert at hawaii.edu> -----
> > Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 09:04:35 -0500
> > From: John Sibert <sibert at hawaii.edu>
> > Reply-To: John Sibert <sibert at hawaii.edu>
> > Subject: electronic tagging data base
> > To: Bill Michener <wmichene at lternet.edu>
> > 
> > Dear Bill,
> > 
> > Thank you very much for you presentation to the PFRP PI meeting in
> > December. I may have mentioned to you that some colleagues and I are
> > contemplating creating a shared data base for electronic tagging data.
> Your
> > talk opened my eyes to the fact that other people have addressed
> this
> > problem and pointed me to some tools. I downloaded Morpho, created a
> > prototype data base for one of our tags, and uploaded it to the KNB
> web
> > site. (It contains only 2 days of raw data, but the full set of
> processed
> > data.) To see it. point your browser to
> > http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/index.jsp Then type "fish track"
> (without
> > quotes) in the search box. It should turn up a "package" entitled "Raw
> data
> > and estimated track for mooring tag 97-224" click on it to see a
> prototype
> > shareable data base.
> > 
> > I'm not quite ready to recommend this to my colleagues, but it has
> some
> > advantages. It makes use of XML and uses the EML "standard" for
> ecological
> > data. 
> 
> And the new version that we are working on supports the full EML 2.0.0
> 
> specification.
> Hosting is taken care of. Access can be controlled (but I haven't
> > figured it out yet). 
> 
> Access control is based on unique distinguished names for users in the
> 
> shared community LDAP database.  The interface in Morpho 1.4 is 
> difficult to use by anyone other than an EML expert -- the upcoming 1.5
> 
> release of Morpho will have a substantially improved access control 
> interface.  If you need help with the existing interface, let us 
> know...its not hard but you have to know the right syntax for 
> distinguished names of users.
> 
> It has a user interface. On the other hand Morpho is
> > slightly annoying to use. 
> 
> Yep. We've been working on this.  Its an incremental process, and I 
> think you'll find the upcoming 1.5 release to be a completely different
> 
> (and better) user experience.  Bear with us...developing good user 
> interfaces is not easy, especially with small development teams like 
> ours.  And on that note, we appreciate any feedback on things that were
> 
> particularly annoying or that you think would improve the interface 
> substantially.  We also would welcome code contribtions that improve the
> 
> interface as long as you work with us to make sure your ideas are 
> compatible with the direction we're taking Morpho.  We'd be happy if 
> there were broad community participation in the design and development
> 
> of Morpho.
> 
> The EML standard lacks some features that we
> > might want to have. In particular, additional metadata fields would
> be
> > required for electronic tags and data compression would be required
> for raw
> > data. 
> 
> Data compression is completely possible with the current eml-2.0.0 
> standard -- you just need to indicate the compression algorithm in the
> 
> eml-physical section of the metadata.  The new EML 2.0.0 standard is 
> extensible (it allows arbitrary additionalMetadata sections that can be
> 
> validated or not at the user's choice).  So electronic tags should be 
> supported there at a minimum, even if there isn't a specific field in 
> EML for that information.  If you think this information is general 
> enough to be added to the EML specification, you can propose such an 
> enhancement on eml-dev at ecoinformatics.org and it will be discussed and
> 
> considered for a future release of EML.
> 
> And it is not strictly under control of the PFRP, an issue that will
> > concern some of my colleagues.
> 
> Because EML is extensible (you can add your own fields), I hope it would
> 
> meet your needs.  That said, EML development is an open, 
> community-oriented process, so you can very easily influence or even 
> drive the development of the specification by getting actively involved
> 
> in the EML project.  More information on contributing to EML is 
> available at http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/eml
> 
> > It would seem that since EML is based on XML, it is extensible.
> Therefore
> > we could extend both XML and Morpho to be more suitable for use in
> > electronic tagging. Can you suggest someone I should contact in the
> EML
> > community that could give me some feedback?
> 
> Anyone on eml-dev at ecoinformatics.org can help with technical issues.  If
> 
> you want you can email me directly and I can try to direct your request
> 
> appropriately.  In any case, you probably want to use the structures 
> found under "/eml/additionalMetadata" for customization as an initial 
> starting point -- I'd be happy to explain how the reference pointers 
> work in that section if it isn't clear to you from the EML
> specification.
> 
> I'm glad to see you're working with the specification, and thanks for 
> your comments.  Cheers,
> 
> Matt
> 
> > Best wishes for the New Year,
> > John
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > ____________________________________
> > 
> > John Sibert, Manager
> > Pelagic Fisheries Research Program
> > University of Hawaii at Manoa
> > 1000 Pope Road, MSB 313
> > Honolulu, HI 96822
> > United States
> > 
> > Phone: (808) 956-4109
> > Fax: (808) 956-4104
> > ____________________________________
> > 
> > Washington DC
> > Phone: (202) 861 2363
> > Fax: (202) 861 4767
> > ____________________________________
> > 
> > PFRP Web Site:   http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PFRP/
> > email:  sibert at hawaii.edu
> > _________________________________
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > ----- End forwarded message -----
> 
> 
> 
> 




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