LTER Metacat Advanced Query Interface

1
LTER MetacatAdvanced Query Interface

• LTER Information Managers Meeting
• Montreal, Canada
• 4-7 August 2005
• Mark Servilla (LNO)

2
Goals Products

• Initial design - 2004 IM Meeting, Portland
• Supported under the LTER NISAC
• More expressive queries to Metacat
• Interface provides
• Simple query form
• Advanced query form
• Subject
• Author
• Spatial
• Taxonomic
• Simple browse catalog (KNB like)

3
Goals Products cont.

• Decouple from Metacat to enhance portability
• Runs as a separate web application (as a servlet
  in a Tomcat container)
• Utilize standard patterns and designs
• Apache Struts MVC design
• Parameterized for site-specific skins (in
  progress)

4
Metacat Notes

• Performance issues are being addressed by
  metacat-dev
• Separate active versus deprecated xml_nodes
• Generate database indices for key columns
• DBA configurable indices
• Enhance xml_node query syntax
• Improve host hardware configuration/recommendation
  s (e.g., up memory, clustering, etc)

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Architecture
Metacat 1.5
LTER Query Interface
Metacat Database
Apache Struts
Jakarta Tomcat 5
Java 1.4.2
Windows/Linux/Unix
prairie.lternet.edu
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Architecture X
Metacat Database
server.X.edu
prairie.lternet.edu
7
Architecture X-Y
Metacat Database
server.Y.edu
server.X.edu
prairie.lternet.edu
8
LTER Custom Unit Registry
Demonstration