Earth Science Markup Language

The Earth Science Markup Language (ESML) is a specialized markup language for Earth Science metadata based on the eXtensible Markup Language (XMLTM). It is being designed to provide a standard way for describing both content and structure of a data file, thus facilitating development of dataset-independent search, visualization, and analysis tools without requiring data to be in any particular format or formats. A standard definition for structural metadata, in particular, is needed to enable the interoperation of data access and analysis tools with a wide variety of different Earth science data file formats and structures. Work with standard data formats, such as HDF-EOS, has attempted to address the data structure definition problem, but this type of solution requires the translation of all the data files to the proposed format. ESML would allow applications to be independent of data formats, and would facilitate easier searches for data via Internet search engines. The primary purpose of this paper is to bring ESML to the attention of data consumers and producers, and invite comments and suggestions.