 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
| EDMED – XML DOCUMENTATION (updated December 2005) |
| INTRODUCTION |
The European Directory of Marine Environmental Datasets (EDMED) is a comprehensive reference to the marine data sets and collections held within European research laboratories, so as to provide marine scientists, engineers and policy makers with a simple mechanism for their identification. It covers a wide range of disciplines including marine meteorology; physical, chemical and biological oceanography; sedimentology; marine biology and fisheries; environmental quality; coastal and estuarine studies; marine geology and geophysics; etc.
Institutes can create their EDMED entries following the format and basic guidelines in the document:
How to prepare entries for EDMED — October 1999 (161 KB)
The EDMED forms are collated by the SEA-SEARCH network of national collating centres, who are responsible for seeking out, collating and maintaining their national EDMED directories following the format and guidelines in the document:
Instructions for collating EDMED entries — January 2000 (66 KB)
The compilation and maintenance of entries for EDMED is coordinated by the National Oceanographic Data Centres (NODCs) of the Sea-Search-SeaDataNet network, who contact and communicate with institutes in their countries to gather and to ensure up-to-date information and inclusion of important marine data sets. Entries are prepared by using an offline MS-Access entry software program or alternatively by exchange of ISO19115-compliant XML-files. This latter, using the ISO metadata standard, is designed for those partners who hold EDMED-like information in their own databases.
| XML – ISO19115 Format and schema |
For purposes of standardization, international exchange and interoperability with other systems and networks the International Metadata Standard for Geographic Information ISO19115 has been adopted for the exchange of EDMED entries. The XML ISO19115 schema (or DTD) is defined and managed by the Technical committee TC211 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), who is responsible for making international standards on geographic information (www.isotc211.org). The standard defines more than 300 metadata elements, most of which can be applied optionally. It contains around ten elements, which are mandatory ‘core’ metadata. Moreover one can create profiles and add new elements.
IFREMER (FR) has undertaken a major effort in Sea-Search to define the EDMED XML format as a subset of this standard. This has resulted in an XML format for EDMED which is fully ISO 19115 compliant. The following documentation is available:
For a wider recognition and adoption on a global scale the documented formats have also been submitted to the Marine XML consortium and posted at their website: http://ioc.unesco.org/marinexml
BODC (UK) has developed an import mechanism to process and to import EDMED XML files into the central EDMED database, which has been tested for partner contributions and now is operational. The following document gives an extensive description of the EDMED XML format and the import procedure:
| XML procedure and Java Tools |
|
© Copyright Sea-Search - SeaDataNet 1998 - - All rights Reserved. |
|