Hi All,
I thought that I might keep you informed of our progress with the Schematron
for validating XML metadata document instances. We have created three
Schematron files. They are being tested at the moment but I think that they
are very close. If there are changes then any software that reads Schematron
files shouldn't be affected. It just needs to read the new versions of those
files.
The files are:
1. Schematron that implements the constraints listed in ISO 19139 table A.1
on page 75
http://asdd.ga.gov.au/asdd/work/ISOmetadata/ISO19139TableA1ConformanceRules.s
ch These rules are nearly all the constraints in ISO 19115.
2. Schematron that checks that the code lists are available on the web and
that the codeListValues used in the XML are valid from that codeList
http://asdd.ga.gov.au/asdd/work/ISOmetadata/codeListValidation.sch
3. Schematron that implements the ANZLIC metadata profile rules
http://asdd.ga.gov.au/asdd/work/ISOmetadata/ANZLIC_ISO_ConformanceRules.sch
Users of course won't need these if you are not trying to generate ANZILC
compliant metadata. However, I have included it to give other users who are
developing profiles a bit of a guide on how to use Schematron to validate XML
against those profiles.
Note that XPATH 2.0, XSLT 2.0 and ISO Schematron must be used to run these
rules during validation. Also that the codeListValidation Schematron will
need access to the internet to find the codeLists. (Maybe via a proxy. We
had trouble with this using Oxygen.)
I would envisage that GeoNetwork will need to validate the XML metadata
document instances against the ISO 19139 XSDs using a good parser (I believe
that version 2.1 already does this, doesn't it?). If SAXON is used then it
can also validate the XML using the Schematron depending on the version of
SAXON. There will be the need for a multi-parse process during the
validation. oNVDL is a very good tool that can do this.
I was wondering is there any intention to add this Schematron validation
functionality to version 2.1 or a later version?
Thanks.
John Hockaday
Geoscience Australia
GPO Box 378
Canberra ACT 2601
(02) 6249 9735
http://www.ga.gov.au/
john.hockaday\@ga.gov.au