[postgis-users] Metadata (fgdc, etc)?

[Carl Anderson]

Webb,

IMHO Metadata and datastores are or should be separate functions.

Datastores provide access to vertices, Linestrings, Polygons, Raster 
data, ....
Metadata servers provides a single, searchable repository to the 
datastores avaliable at a location or enterprise.

We use Geonetwork (http://geonetwork.sf.net) as a portal (HTTP, Z39.50, 
CSW) to our metadata.
We configured Geonetwork to use Postgresql as its backend so we could 
automatically update some of the records.

Geonetwork stores metadata records as a BLOB in the database.  That 
means the entire XML document of a metadata entry is stored in a single 
field.
You can very easily use XSLT functions in Postgresql or in any client 
application to transform your metadata into any of the various formats 
that are useful to you.

When you consider that metadata might be stored or useful in
Dublin Core with Geospatial Extensions
FGDC version 2 (CSDGM) or
ISO 19115 or
USMARC (ISO 2709)
FGDC version 3 (ISO 19139) or
anything else

The abstraction of storing the XML metadata document as a BLOB becomes 
very appealing.

C.

Webb Sprague wrote:
> I am sorry if I missed it in my cursory search...
>
> Is there a postgis (at least postgresql) specific way to store
> metadata?  Any personal best practices?  A link would be fine.
>
> (This makes me wonder about keeping track of the temporal validity of
> either a table or a geometry, like when a city is busy subdividing and
> annexing, but that is another story for another day.)
>
> Thanks for all the help and the (to Refractions and developer
> community) the great free product.
> W
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