Standards & Software
Geo-Seas is adopting the SeaDataNet infrastructure approach, architecture and components to interconnect the geological and geophysical data centres and their collections. The architecture makes use of recent web technologies, such as SOAP web services for various communication tasks and for providing supporting services for XML metadata validation, serving common vocabularies, authentication of users for data access, and handling the data transaction process between the portal and the interconnected data centres. For this purpose web applications have been developed. Moreover Java software modules have been developed for editing and generating metadata files in XML, converting data formats, and for connecting local data centres to the centra portal for queries and downloading services.An overview of the existing SeaDataNet Standards & Software can be found at the SeaDataNet website.
These standards and software tools have been developed for SeaDataNet and are adapted, where needed, for Geo-Seas purposes. In WP4 activities are undertaken for defining the metadata formats and data transport formats for Geo-Seas, taking SeaDataNet as the basis, but also taking into account international practice and experience from the GeoSciML and One-Geology Europe projects. For geological and a number of geophysical data types such as bathymetric surveys this has resulted in a upgrading of the CDI metadata format in cooperation with the SeaDataNet Technical Task Team. Extensions have been added for handling also tracks and polygons in a detailed manner. To support this upgrade also the CDI editor software (MIKADO) and the CDI portal applications have been upgraded and the upgraded service is now fully operational for Geo-Seas and SeaDataNet. A further extension of the CDI metadata format is underway in WP4 for supporting seismic surveys. Once defined this will determine further modifications of the MIKADO tool and portal software, which is implemented as part of the WP8 software development activities.
The resulting Standards & Software are used for both Geo-Seas and SeaDataNet and are described and documented in the webpages at the SeaDataNet website.