[ckan-dev] CSW, ISO and Spatial Extension

Sat Oct 27 20:47:55 UTC 2012

Hi Bruce --

Very good to hear that there are other people interested in this. 

We've landed on what is a similar approach for our work up to this point -- one system with a nice interface for content management, then ship that content off to another application in order to provide a CSW service. Presently we're using a custom application for content management utilizing Django, Node.js and CouchDB. That system presents a "web-accessible folder" that is harvested into ESRI's Geoportal in order to provide a CSW interface. If you're curious at all, you can find the CMS at http://repository.stategeothermaldata.org. Metadata is output to http://repository.stategeothermaldata.org/metadata/record.iso.xml. The CSW endpoint is running at http://catalog.stategeothermaldata.org/geoportal/csw?request=GetCapabilities&service=CSW

It is a relatively complicated system involving a bunch of technologies and at least three disconnected code bases. We've got an opportunity to build a more cohesive system, and CKAN looks like a good fit. Plus there's the **huge** benefit of working with an existing user/developer community that's growing around CKAN vs. the "community of one" that's playing with our existing systems.

Hopefully I'll be looking into it more over the coming weeks. I'm really hoping to get some feedback from the folks who built the existing CSW extension in order to better understand the use cases they were trying to facilitate. It would also be really great to learn about the roadmap for the spatial extension, which is clearly getting some significant attention and deserves even more!

Thanks!
____________________

Ryan Clark
ryan.clark at azgs.az.gov
(520) 302-4871

On Oct 27, 2012, at 2:56 PM, Bruce Crevensten <becrevensten at alaska.edu> wrote:

> Hi Ryan,
> 
> Our organization has a similar set of concerns regarding ISO19139 / ISO19115.  We're currently using GeoNetwork, which is excellent for schema-based metadata but presents some challenges regarding low-friction integration into our other applications.  I've been investigating using CKAN to harvest records from GeoNetwork via CSW; we can then leverage CKAN's user interface for content management (adding custom fields) and use its data API to integrate with custom apps while leaving the more structured, schema-based work to GeoNetwork.
> 
> I've successfully performed a harvest, and my next step is to drill down on how CKAN mapped the fields from GeoNetwork into its own key/value store.  Most things came through fine, and other gaps are either due to our imperfect use of the ISO19115 standard or, perhaps, areas where the harvester could be tuned.  I'm still investigating, and due to other project assignments, I regret that I may not be able to post outcomes from this for some time.  When I have progress to report, I'll post it here.
> 
> While the GeoNetwork / CKAN integration may not make sense in other environments, I just wanted to let you know there's other folks out there that have a similar set of concerns, and it'd be great if you posted how you solved (or explored) the problem.
> 
> Regards,
> - Bruce
> 
> On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 8:50 AM, Ryan Clark <ryan.clark at azgs.az.gov> wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I'm in the process of evaluating CKAN's potential for use in a distributed data system for geothermal information that is being built in the US. A fundamental component of our project is the concept of a catalog which contains standardized metadata describing distributed data resources across the web. At that level, CKAN seems like a very nice fit!
> 
> We are committed to providing metadata according to a custom profile for ISO 19139, and to implementing a CSW interface. I've started by playing with the spatial, harvest, and csw extensions, which are clearly undergoing significant development currently -- I see that they've all been merged into one extension as of last week! What I found was that while the CSW interface responds to queries, it does not expose any of the resources that I had published in my development environment -- GetRecords and GetRecordByID never return anything.
> 
> While I'm new to SQLalchemy, spatial.controllers.csw:GetRecords looks to me like it is configured to only return records that were brought into the catalog via a harvest mechanism. Is this true?
> 
> If so, that brings up what I suspect is the primary issue I would have to deal with in order to implement CKAN -- I suspect that there would need to be a mapping from CKAN's "internal metadata model" (basically the package table) into XML records that can be exposed via CSW. It is also likely that in order to generate a complete ISO 19139 record might require some additional content in the internal model.
> 
> Does this sound like I'm on the right track? Is there any existing pattern for doing this kind of translation where I might start looking for guidance?
> 
> Thanks!
> ____________________
> 
> Ryan Clark
> ryan.clark at azgs.az.gov
> (520) 302-4871
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> -- 
> 
> Bruce Crevensten, Web Programmer
> Scenarios Network for Alaska & Arctic Planning
> 3352 College Road, 2nd Floor Denali Building
> Fairbanks, AK 99709
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