SEA-SEARCH = Marine Research Projects Database

Central Organisations Database Documentation (updated September 2007)

Introduction
Basis reference
User interface Organisations database
Online Content Management System
EDMO Web service
Web services

Introduction:

The SeaDataNet partners maintain national entries for a number of metadata directories, that are published as part of the SeaDataNet services. These were initiated within the Sea-Search project and are continued and upgraded within SeaDataNet:

European Directory of Marine Environmental Datasets (EDMED)
European Directory of Marine Environmental Research Projects (EDMERP)
Cruise Summary Reports (CSR)
European Directory of the Ocean-observing System (EDIOS) (together with EuroGoos)
Common Data Index (CDI)

For each of these directories addresses and profiles are collected by SeaDataNet partners on organisations, that are active in Europe in the field of marine & oceanographic data acquisition and research. Previously this more or less happened without coordination between the different directories.

Within the scope of the upgrading of the discovery services a Central Organisations database has been set-up to streamline and to manage these addresses and organisation profiles efficiently and in a consistent way. This has resulted in the European Directory of Marine Organisations EDMO.

Basis reference, which all must read before starting:

Document ‘Central Organisations Database - Harmonizing organisation entries for EDMED, EDMERP, CDI, EDIOS and CSR’ version 1.01 prepared by Technical Task Group

This guidance document gives background information on the Central Organisations Database, the tools developed for querying and maintenance, rules for maintenance and how to derive lists for use in the other metadata directories.

User Interface for querying the full Organisations database (back-office)

Organisations

This User Interface enables partners to query and to browse through all listed organisations and to view their codes in CDI, EDMED, EDMERP, CSR and EDIOS (Version 0).

As part of the query user interface a special export function is included for creating and getting the latest update of the full or subsets of the cdi_originator_codes.csv , that is used for coding organisations in the CDI metadatabase.

Partners can perform a query on the ‘all Organisations’ module and without specifying criteria all Organisations will be listed. Using the function ‘EXPORT CDI List will then generate dynamically the latest cdi_originator_codes.csv file, that can be downloaded as a .csv file.
Alternatively partners can first specify query, e.g. specify their country, and that will result in a list of selected entries. Using the function ‘EXPORT SUBSET CDI List will then generate dynamically the subset, that can be downloaded as a .csv file. This can be very handy when preparing local CDI entries, whereby CDI partners do not require dealing with the full list of 1000+ entries.

Online Content Management System for maintenance of entries by SeaDataNet partners (back-office)

This enables SeaDataNet partners to check and to upgrade their national organisation entries. Each SeaDataNet partner has a user id – password to log in and can only maintain their national entries, which includes editing of existing entries, adding logo’s, illustrations and geographical positions with the help of a dynamic map. BODC and MARIS have a master log in for entering and editing codes and new organisation entries and deleting existing entries, in case of duplicates.

EDMO Web Services

SeaDataNet, successor to Sea-Search, aims for full integration of EDMO in the Directories, which will improve efficiency and overall consistency and will support the relationships between the Directories. This is facilitated by providing EDMO also as a Web service, next to its existing User Interface. This can be used to support the XML Validation services, that are under development to quality control and streamline the exchange of XML files between partners and the SeaDataNet system for updating e.g. EDMED, CDI etc.. Also regional and local partners can use the EDMO Web service as a basis to develop their own regional / local user interface and client applications.

The EDMO Web service has been developed by MARIS to support the following use cases:

User wants the entire contents of the EDMO database
User wants the full organization record for a given EDMO_code
User wants the EDMO_code for a specified Organization name or short name
User wants the active Country names in the EDMO database
User wants the active alphabet of First Characters of the Organization names in the EDMO database
User wants to search the EDMO database for a combination of search parameters (First Character of Organization name, Country name, Free text string, and lat-lon coordinates window, last update date) and to receive a short OR long output

The EDMO Web service and its WSDL document can be found at:

The EDMO Web service has been developed in the following environment:

Web Server with Windows 2003 and IIS 6.0
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 developers tools = .NET
Microsoft .NET framework latest version v2.0.50727 = addition to Visual Studio and runtime for the Web server.

Web Services

A Web service is a collection of protocols and standards used for exchanging data between applications or systems. Software applications written in various programming languages and running on various platforms can use web services to exchange data over the Internet in a manner similar to inter-process communication on a single computer. This interoperability (e.g., between Java and Python, or Windows and Linux applications) is due to the use of open standards. In common usage the term usually refers to those services that use SOAP-formatted XML envelopes and have their interfaces described by WSDL.

SOAP: "Simple Object Access Protocol". An XML-based, extensible message envelope format, with "bindings" to underlying protocols (e.g., HTTP, SMTP)
WSDL: "Web Services Description Language" An XML format that allows service interfaces to be described, along with the details of their bindings to specific protocols. Typically used to generate server and client code, and for configuration. This means that WSDL describes the public interface to the web service.
UDDI: "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration" A protocol for publishing and discovering metadata about Web services, to enable applications to find Web services.

Web services provide excellent opportunities for interoperability and will be applied as key technology in the development of the new SeaDataNet infrastructure for managing and providing transparent access to Pan-European marine and ocean metadata directories, data sets and data products.