Extended Abstract (276K)5.8
A Web-Based Scientific Data And Information Super Server With A Flexible XML Metadata Support
Ruixin Yang, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA; and X. S. Wang, Y. Nie, Y. Zhao, and M. Kafatos
In the information age and with explosively increasing volumes of remote sensing, model and other Earth Science data available, scientists, including meteorologists, are now facing challenges to find and to access interesting data sets effectively and efficiently through the Internet. Metadata have been recognized as a key technology to ease the search and retrieval of Earth science, NWP and other meteorological data. In this paper, we first discuss the DIstributed MEtadata Server (DIMES) prototype system. Designed to be flexible yet simple, DIMES uses XML to represent, store, retrieve and interoperate metadata in a distributed environment. DIMES accepts metadata in any well-formed XML format and thus assumes the "tree" semantics of metadata entries. In addition to regular metadata search, DIMES provides a web-based metadata navigation interface by using the "nearest neighbor search." We also discuss a system designed to integrate an existing data access and analysis server, namely the GrADS/DODS server, and the DIMES to form a Scientific Data Information Super Server (SDISS), which supports both metadata and data. The SDISS guarantees the consistency between the content of the data server and the content of the metadata server.
Supplementary URL: http://spring.scs.gmu.edu:8199/servlet/SiesipDataTree
Session 5, Internet Applications and Web Portals
Tuesday, 11 February 2003, 8:30 AM-1:30 PM
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