Dear all,
We're proud to announce the development of the SwissTopo geocat II project that is undertaken by CampToCamp ( http://www.camptocamp.com ), BRGM (http://www.brgm.fr/) and GeoCat ( http://geocat.net ) in collaboration with SwissTopo.
The purpose of the project is to develop the next generation geospatial catalog for SwissTopo on the basis of GeoNetwork opensource. A range of very interesting and innovative functions are currently under development for the project and I'll highlight a number of them here.
Integration of the MapFish - OpenLayers map viewer
A new end user interface is under development based on MapFish, OpenLayers and ExtJS. The focus is on end users, the existing user interface will be kept for administrators and content providers. The new search interface works against the GeoNetwork catalog using the OGC CSW catalog service protocol, but will use a number of GeoNetwork specific functions to augment the end user experience.
Some of the advantages of the new interface: support for multiple spatial reference systems in the map viewer; Support for tiled map services; see the coverage of the selected resource on the overview map; client cache of map tiles; allow to specify a complex area of interest to be used in the search; others...
Multilingual Metadata
One metadata record can contain text in multiple languages according to the ISO19139 specific encoding. The editor will allow users to translate specific free text parts of the metadata record in other languages. For example the title and abstract of a metadata. In the case of the SwissTopo catalog, support will be provided for Italian, French and German languages. The search also deals with multilingual metadata as a consequence.
Support for XLink in metadata
Metadata sometimes contains repetitive content, like contact information. That content can be stored and handled separately from the main metadata record to reduce duplication. XLink is used to maintain the relation between metadata and contact information. It is also used for data distribution format, keywords and spatial reference systems.
Metadata Element hiding
Metadata often contains text that a data provider would rather hide from the general user. The project works on a system to hide specific metadata elements according to a user profile. The content provider can specify within the metadata editor what content to hide for a specific user profile, using XPath expressions. A management interface will be developed for this within the GeoNetwork metadata editor.
Complex Spatial Search
Beyond the standard BBOX (bounding box) queries, GeoNetwork will support spatial searching using GeoTools and JTS. More complex bounding boxes defined in the metadata, for example a line, point or polygon, can be indexed and queried. Queries can also use more complex geometries than simple bounding boxes. The MapFish/OpenLayers interface will allow users to define such search geometries.
French, German & Italian community support
Due to the nature of the project, running in a country with multiple official languages, multiple language communities will directly benefit from its developments. The French, German and Italian language support in GeoNetwork will improve and the respective user communities will likely expand considerably. One idea is to create language specific user mailing lists for those communities to improve interaction within them.
I hope the community as a whole will greatly benefit from the SwissTopo developments. You will be able to follow developments within a specific sandbox branch on Subversion. The above listed features will then slowly find their way into the trunk, hopefully with the help of members in the community.
Enjoy,
Jeroen
____________________________________________________
Jeroen Ticheler
GeoCat bv
Grotenhuisweg 61
7384 CT Wilp
Tel: +31 (0)6 81286572
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