[GeoNetwork-devel] Support for CSW2 Harvest (or Transaction) in GN?

dear Geonetworkers,

Given the new Draft Implementing Rules on Discovery Services for INSPIRE[0],
I now have a requirement to connect a non-CSW metadata repository to a CSW2
instance. The guidelines require a discovery service to support EITHER the Transaction set of operations or the Harvest ones.
For Harvest support this specific subset is indicated:

CSWT Manager.Harvest operation
* Harvest
* Source
* ResponseHandler
* HarvestInterval
* Harvestresponse (TransactionResponse)

- As of a while ago GN didn't support CSW2 Harvest but does it now?
- And what is the state of the SOAP bindings for CSW2 generally?
Now they will be mandatory for INSPIRE-compliance it will be useful to put forward GeoNetwork as an "open source INSPIRE discovery solution".

As an alternative to Harvest operations a "discovery service" can support this subset of the CSW2 Transaction functions:

CSWT Manager.Transaction operation
* Transaction Insert
* Insert
* Transaction
* Transactionresponse (TransactionSummaryType, totalInserted)
* Transaction Update
* Constraint
* RecordProperty (Name, Value)
* Transactionresponse (TransactionSymmaryType, totalUpdated)
* Transaction Delete
* Constraint

But i figure that as an implementor not wishing to "buy in" to CSW but just to produce the minimum necessary to get metadata into a CSW2 instance with SOAP bindings, client support for Harvest rather than Transaction is the way to go.
(Avoiding having to interact with authentication mechanisms and letting the server decide whether it wants the data, hopefully)

I will be working on a basic client in python, and would like to be able to test it against a GN installation if possible.

cheers,

jo

[0] http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/implementingRulesDocs_ns.cfm - all the latest drafts with the CSW2 ISO AP implementation guidelines at
http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/reports/ImplementingRules/network/D3.7_Draft_Technical_Guidance_document_Discovery_Services_v1.0.pdf