[GeoNetwork-users] Several instances setup (was Re: Fed up with GeoNetwork)

Cesar_Martinez_Izqui · November 29, 2012, 8:21am

Hi Brent, we also have the need to setup several catalogs for our projects,
and I'd like to know what is your preferred environment to set up them (for
instance: virtual servers each running a Tomcat with a single GeoNetwork
instance, or a single server running several instances of GeoNetwork on the
same Tomcat, etc).

I would really love to listen your experiences for this kind of setups.

Best regards,

César

2012/11/28 <pcreso@anonymised.com>

Hi Moenk,
I figure another user's perspective might be appropriate.
I have been successfully using Geonetwork since 2009 in a production
environment.

In 2008 the institute I work for participated in an international research
initiative. Participation included the requirement to provide data, etc
online. I selected Geonetwork as the tool to do this. We had no problems.
At around 12:00PM on the day we started to actually implement it, I started
looking for a suitable host, by 4:30PM I had a host & Geonetwork
admin/support agreement in place.
Within a couple of days it was running, & I prepared a "HowTo" for our
researchers to populate their metadata, which enabled staff to load
metadata without ever contacting me regarding the system. It was commended
as perhaps the best catalogue & metadata mgmt facility of all participants
in the programme.

Since 2009 we have deployed several more instances. I have demonstrated a
simple, very basic install & deployment from scratch, it can take well
under an hour.
All our systems are using Postgis as the underlying database.

So my results are very different from yours. I agree, it is not easy to
customise, is sensitive to the setup of dependencies, & requires a good
level of technical expertise to run much more than a standard installation.
but have found that once installed & configured, it is a robust & effective
tool.
I also agree, compared with other Open Source project I work with
regularly, the level of help provided on the list is not as good, but I'm
also aware of a local agency who are using ESRI's Geoportal solution, and
turning this into a viable production system appears much more difficult.
Given you are looking for a tool with good integration with Arc Catalog,
did you not consider Geoportal as an option?

We are extensively harvesting catalogue records, between our own
catalogues, between ours & national government catalogues, between ours and
international catalogues, and generally (not always) configuring Geonetwork
to support this has been relatively straightforward, and the developers
have provided very useful assistance (notably Simon Pigot).
In addition to harvesting, we use a third party CSW client to embed a
simpler client interface in our web sites for users to search & browse the
Geonetwork catalogue. This has also worked reliably & effectively (& is
also Open Source).
Successive versions have consistently introduced very useful & desirable
capabilities, not always as quickly as we would have liked, but at least as
quickly as most commercial vendors have enhanced their apps based on users
requests, at least in my 30 years experience of such things.
One point, given the large numbeer of significant catalogues running
Geonetwork, which never seem to have any recourse to the mailing list, my
conclusion is that many users are indeed able to simply download, install &
use Geonetwork without problems, or at least without asking there for
assistance.
So while you & some others may have found Geonetwork does not provide a
viable solution, my experience (& that of many others) has been very
different. You also suggest that a Google search found other users finding
problems much like yours. I would also suggest a Google search can easily
find many viable institutional, national & international Geonetwork
catalogues which are running reliably & effectively.

Cheers,
Brent Wood

--- On Wed, 11/28/12, moenk <moenkemt@anonymised.com> wrote:

From: moenk <moenkemt@anonymised.com>
Subject: [GeoNetwork-users] Fed up with GeoNetwork
To: geonetwork-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Date: Wednesday, November 28, 2012, 11:12 PM

Folks,

we tried to use GeoNetwork for a geo-spatial infrastructure in our project
for one year now. I'm really fed up with this software. Is there anybody
out
there who is using it and is satisfied with it in a productive enviroment?

I have my doubts about this and you are welcome to show me a least one
working reference installation. Googling for installations of GeoNetwork
shows up several sites with the same problems I encountered the last year.

Problems starts with the Java/Tomcat-enviroment, you need to know how to
configure memory, editing files with the wrong editor might crash the whole
system. Simple changes to the XSL-based templates require a system restart.
PostGIS-support needs that you know the right howto and user need to find
out how it works. Fancy error messages in HTML from time to time and search
results that are not really useful.

At this time I do not dare to ask about a working up- and download of
geodata in ZIP-archives and indexing metadata and thumbnails that it to be
found in the wild, i.e. created by ArcCatalog.

A fews weeks ago I deteled all the Java/Tomcat-crap and started coding a
solution on my own, open source of course and available on GitHub, a simple
LAMP-thing coded in PHP. Users can upload geodata with metadata, provide
service-URLs or website-URLs, all done very simple, feel free to have a
look
on gdi.geo.hu-berlin.de to get an impression how I think a GDI should
work.

Thanks for the time here,

-moenk

-----
Geomatics Lab | Geography Department | Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin
web: http://www.geographie.hu-berlin.de
--
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--
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
   César Martínez Izquierdo
   GIS developer
   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
   ETC-SIA: http://sia.eionet.europa.eu/
   Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (SPAIN)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Brent_Wood · November 29, 2012, 9:17am

Hi Cesar,How we do this is detailed here:
http://trac.osgeo.org/geonetwork/wiki/HowToRunMultipleGeonetworkInstancesUnderTomcat
Hope this helps...
Brent Wood
--- On Thu, 11/29/12, César Martínez Izquierdo <cesar.izq@anonymised.com> wrote:

From: César Martínez Izquierdo <cesar.izq@anonymised.com>
Subject: Several instances setup (was Re: Fed up with GeoNetwork)
To: pcreso@anonymised.com
Cc: "moenk" <moenkemt@anonymised.com>, geonetwork-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Date: Thursday, November 29, 2012, 9:21 PM

Hi Brent, we also have the need to setup several catalogs for our projects, and I'd like to know what is your preferred environment to set up them (for instance: virtual servers each running a Tomcat with a single GeoNetwork instance, or a single server running several instances of GeoNetwork on the same Tomcat, etc).

I would really love to listen your experiences for this kind of setups.

Best regards,

César

2012/11/28 <pcreso@anonymised.com>

Hi Moenk,

I figure another user's perspective might be appropriate.

I have been successfully using Geonetwork since 2009 in a production environment.

In 2008 the institute I work for participated in an international research initiative. Participation included the requirement to provide data, etc online. I selected Geonetwork as the tool to do this. We had no problems. At around 12:00PM on the day we started to actually implement it, I started looking for a suitable host, by 4:30PM I had a host & Geonetwork admin/support agreement in place.

Within a couple of days it was running, & I prepared a "HowTo" for our researchers to populate their metadata, which enabled staff to load metadata without ever contacting me regarding the system. It was commended as perhaps the best catalogue & metadata mgmt facility of all participants in the programme.

Since 2009 we have deployed several more instances. I have demonstrated a simple, very basic install & deployment from scratch, it can take well under an hour.

All our systems are using Postgis as the underlying database.

So my results are very different from yours. I agree, it is not easy to customise, is sensitive to the setup of dependencies, & requires a good level of technical expertise to run much more than a standard installation. but have found that once installed & configured, it is a robust & effective tool.

I also agree, compared with other Open Source project I work with regularly, the level of help provided on the list is not as good, but I'm also aware of a local agency who are using ESRI's Geoportal solution, and turning this into a viable production system appears much more difficult.

Given you are looking for a tool with good integration with Arc Catalog, did you not consider Geoportal as an option?

We are extensively harvesting catalogue records, between our own catalogues, between ours & national government catalogues, between ours and international catalogues, and generally (not always) configuring Geonetwork to support this has been relatively straightforward, and the developers have provided very useful assistance (notably Simon Pigot).

In addition to harvesting, we use a third party CSW client to embed a simpler client interface in our web sites for users to search & browse the Geonetwork catalogue. This has also worked reliably & effectively (& is also Open Source).

Successive versions have consistently introduced very useful & desirable capabilities, not always as quickly as we would have liked, but at least as quickly as most commercial vendors have enhanced their apps based on users requests, at least in my 30 years experience of such things.

One point, given the large numbeer of significant catalogues running Geonetwork, which never seem to have any recourse to the mailing list, my conclusion is that many users are indeed able to simply download, install & use Geonetwork without problems, or at least without asking there for assistance.

So while you & some others may have found Geonetwork does not provide a viable solution, my experience (& that of many others) has been very different. You also suggest that a Google search found other users finding problems much like yours. I would also suggest a Google search can easily find many viable institutional, national & international Geonetwork catalogues which are running reliably & effectively.

Cheers,

Brent Wood

--- On Wed, 11/28/12, moenk <moenkemt@anonymised.com> wrote:

From: moenk <moenkemt@anonymised.com>

Subject: [GeoNetwork-users] Fed up with GeoNetwork

To: geonetwork-users@lists.sourceforge.net

Date: Wednesday, November 28, 2012, 11:12 PM

Folks,

we tried to use GeoNetwork for a geo-spatial infrastructure in our project

for one year now. I'm really fed up with this software. Is there anybody out

there who is using it and is satisfied with it in a productive enviroment?

I have my doubts about this and you are welcome to show me a least one

working reference installation. Googling for installations of GeoNetwork

shows up several sites with the same problems I encountered the last year.

Problems starts with the Java/Tomcat-enviroment, you need to know how to

configure memory, editing files with the wrong editor might crash the whole

system. Simple changes to the XSL-based templates require a system restart.

PostGIS-support needs that you know the right howto and user need to find

out how it works. Fancy error messages in HTML from time to time and search

results that are not really useful.

At this time I do not dare to ask about a working up- and download of

geodata in ZIP-archives and indexing metadata and thumbnails that it to be

found in the wild, i.e. created by ArcCatalog.

A fews weeks ago I deteled all the Java/Tomcat-crap and started coding a

solution on my own, open source of course and available on GitHub, a simple

LAMP-thing coded in PHP. Users can upload geodata with metadata, provide

service-URLs or website-URLs, all done very simple, feel free to have a look

on gdi.geo.hu-berlin.de to get an impression how I think a GDI should work.

Thanks for the time here,

-moenk

-----

Geomatics Lab | Geography Department | Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin

web: http://www.geographie.hu-berlin.de

--

View this message in context: http://osgeo-org.1560.n6.nabble.com/Fed-up-with-GeoNetwork-tp5019253.html

Sent from the GeoNetwork users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep yourself connected to Go Parallel:

INSIGHTS What's next for parallel hardware, programming and related areas?

Interviews and blogs by thought leaders keep you ahead of the curve.

http://goparallel.sourceforge.net

_______________________________________________

GeoNetwork-users mailing list

GeoNetwork-users@lists.sourceforge.net

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geonetwork-users

GeoNetwork OpenSource is maintained at http://sourceforge.net/projects/geonetwork