Nikolai, Arne Koschel, and Ralf Kramer. Automating metadata updates exemplified by the environmental data catalogue UDK.

Jahr:
1997

Autoren/Hrsg:
Ralf Nikolai, Arne Koschel, and Ralf Kramer

Publikationstyp:
andere

Quelle:
In 8th International Conference on Management of Data (COMAD'97), pages 263 - 276, Chennai (Madras), India, December 1997.

Abstract:
In the ever growing amount of data and other information that has been collected for different purposes, metadata which is often managed in so-called meta information systems is the most important means to facilitate search and retrieval of these data. Distributed Environmental Information Systems (EIS) are one of the most challenging fields to employ meta information systems as a central component, because they have to manage data and further information resources from different knowledge domains. Based on the resulting requirements, several metadata standards have been established in recent years. In order to make full use of metadata and metainformation systems, currently the metadata acquisition and consistency of data and metadata have become the most prominent aspect. The initial collection of metadata is an intellectual process which thus can hardly be automated. Fortunately, metadata updates are more open to automation. In this paper, we address the automation of metadata updates in the framework of the EIS of the German state Baden-Wuerttemberg. We designed and implemented a prototype systems that automates the update of metadata that are kept in a separate metainformation system, the environmental data catalogue Umweltdatenkatalog UDK). For automating metadata updates, a concept was developed that is based on active mechanisms and rule-based programming. Problems of technical heterogeneity and distribution are addressed by employing the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) as an optional middleware layer. The overall concept takes into account both the distribution and the semantic heterogeneity of the environmental information described in the metainformation system. It can also be utilized to automate the process of keeping consistency between the metadate of different metainformation systems such as the UDK and the Catalogue of Data Sources of the European Enivironment Agency.

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