[GeoNetwork-devel] Spatial Search Capabilities + Batch Importing

GeoNetwork GeoNetwork Developer
1

Dear list,

As I wrote in my previous email, an Australian governmental organisation
short listed GeoNetwork as a potential metadata management tool.

Besides versioning being a mandatory requirement there is a strong
desire to have more advanced spatial search capabilities and being able
to do a batch import of metadata from the file system.

Spatial Search:

In an announcement Jeroen sent to the list in November[1], there is
mention of the implementation of complex spatial search capabilities.

Some questions:
      * Is any work already being done in this area and if so, what is
        the status and expected release date?
      * How will the search be implemented? As add-ins to Lucene and if
        so, how? Or using the native capabilities of spatially enabled
        databases?
      * Is there any way we help prioritise the development of this
        part?

Batch Importing:

Byron Cochrane has done some work on automating the creating of metadata
from the file system, see [2]. This looks impressive already.

Questions:
      * What is the current status of your work, Byron?
      * Are there any people out there working on a similar task?
      * Could we discuss the possibility of teaming up and working
        together on this?

Kind regards,

Roald

[1]
http://www.nabble.com/Announcement-SwissTopo-developments-for-GeoNetwork-td20683715.html

[2]
http://n2.nabble.com/SMET-metadata-extraction-tool-version-0.3-td1578056.html

--
Roald de Wit
Software Engineer
roald.dewit@anonymised.com

Commercial Support for Open Source GIS Software
http://lisasoft.com/LISAsoft/SupportedProducts/

2

Hi Roald,

Roald de Wit wrote:

Spatial Search:

In an announcement Jeroen sent to the list in November[1], there is
mention of the implementation of complex spatial search capabilities.

Some questions:
      * Is any work already being done in this area and if so, what is
        the status and expected release date?

Check geocat.ch sandbox for ongoing implementation.

      * How will the search be implemented? As add-ins to Lucene and if
        so, how? Or using the native capabilities of spatially enabled
        databases?

Using GeoTools & JTS so you don't need spatial db to have spatial search. Lucene search is done then the SpatialFilter is applied to search results.
It is available in LuceneSearcher (using geometry and relation parameters) and CatalogSearcher (ie. CSW using FilterEncoding or CQL).

It will support the following operators : Encloses, crosses, outsideof, equal, intersection, overlaps, touches, within. More work required for beyond and dwithin operators (not planned from our side for now).

      * Is there any way we help prioritise the development of this
        part?

In geocat.ch sandbox GeoNetwork searchers are eavily modify as it mix spatial search and multilingual search support.
So more work are needed in order to merge that to trunk.

Batch Importing:

Byron Cochrane has done some work on automating the creating of metadata
from the file system, see [2]. This looks impressive already.

Questions:
      * What is the current status of your work, Byron?
      * Are there any people out there working on a similar task?
      * Could we discuss the possibility of teaming up and working
        together on this?

I've been working on using Talend for that creating metadata from pdf maps and push metadata to GeoNetwork :
http://www.foss4g.org/index.php/foss4g/2008/paper/view/229/139
... but I would like to have a closer look to Byron's work.

Ciao.

Francois