[GeoNode-users] Integration with existing mapserver and associated metadata

[Tom Kralidis]

Hi Margherita:

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 3:58 AM, Margherita Di Leo <diregola at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Tom,
>
> thank you for your kind reply,
>
> On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 8:05 PM, Tom Kralidis <tomkralidis at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Margherita:
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 5:22 AM, Margherita Di Leo <diregola at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Hi again,
>> > Second issue that I encountered is the following. In our system
>> > infrastructure, the data are served by Mapserver, and this is not going
>> > to
>> > change. Introducing GeoNode, however, we want also to introduce the
>> > possibility to selected users to publish their data through the
>> > infrastructure exploiting the capabilities of GeoNode, so geoserver as
>> > well.
>>
>> aside: note that there has been various discussion over the years about
>> making
>> GeoNode's OWS server backend pluggable, so that one can swap
>> out GeoServer for MapServer or something else.  Sounds like this would fit
>> your use case.  I think this is worth investigating in the future.
>
>
> Absolutely, this is the case, and in general I think that it's a very common
> case that potential new users might want to extend functionalities of SDIs
> already in place, and a modular design of interoperable parts could help
> integrate a variety of technologies.
>
>>
>> > And of course we want this to be as seameless as possible. To do this,
>> > we
>> > thought to deploy data from Mapserver via web service in Geonode. But
>> > the
>> > blocker here is how to deal with metadata associated to the maps stored
>> > in
>> > mapserver.
>>
>> Can you clarify here?  What do you mean by maps stored in MapServer?
>> Assuming an OWS endpoint, GeoNode can harvest the service and it's
>> underlying contents (WMS=layers, WFS=featuretypes, WCS=coverages).
>
>
> I wasn't clear here, you are right. I was referring to the metadata
> catalogue associated to the maps that are deployed via MapServer. Beside the
> mapfile, each map has a xml associated. With my previous question, I meant
> to ask, what would be of the nice functionalities of search and discover of
> the metadata that are associated to the maps connected via web services to
> GeoNode Catalogue, rather that uploaded natively in GeoServer. What I would
> like to use GeoNode for is the Catalogue mainly, or, if you want, the nice
> user interface to pycsw server and its functionalities. If it were
> completely pluggable, I'd use only the catalogue and the viewer, on top of a
> pycsw instance for the metadata and a MapServer instance.
> Do you think this development could be feasible in the near future?

I suppose that one can use GeoNode to refer to remote services which
would be harvested into the underlying GeoNode Django model which pycsw
binds to.  We would need to investigate the implementation of this given pure
remote services may be a bit lossy compared to binding directly to the
underlying
data, but there is certainly value here in putting GeoNode as a thin client atop
existing infrastructure.

..Tom

> Thank you
>
>>
>> > I saw that in Geonode the way to load the metadata is one by one
>> > simultaneously with each map. This won't work for our case. What do you
>> > suggest in this case? Should I create a separate instance of pycsw and
>> > harvest it from the geonode catalogue? would the catalogue maintain the
>> > same
>> > capabilities seamlessly?
>> > Any pointers appreciated
>> > Thanks
>> >
>> > --
>> > Margherita Di Leo
>
>
>
>
> --
> Margherita Di Leo