A DIstributed MEtadata Server (DIMES) system has been developed for representing, storing, retrieving and interoperating metadata in a distributed environment. DIMES supports both regular metadata search and a web-based metadata navigation mechanism. DIMES has also been combined with an existing data access and analysis server, namely the GrADS/DODS server, for the purpose of forming a Scientific Data Information Super Server (SDISS), which supports both metadata and data.

The SDISS guarantees consistency between the content of the data server and the content of the metadata server. The key element to achieve this goal is to ingest metadata from the data server to the metadata server. In this paper, the major issues in the ingestion procedures, the design of the ingestion system, and its implementation are discussed and ingestion examples are given.