Datasource Metadata Proposal Two

One of the outcomes from the BerlinProtocolMeeting was to define a "provider" only as the software installation that could serve as an umbrella for one or more datasources. This definition is of little value. However, there's a more important definition for that term if we want to give proper credits to institutions that are somehow involved with the existing networks:

"A provider is an entity (institution or person) responsible for running one or more instances of a data sharing service."

Therefore, a provider in this case is a role associated to a person or an institution. We could easily think about other roles that would deserve credit as well: host and data owner for example.

For now on let's consider two different concepts: provider entities and provider software.

To correctly support the provider entity definition and other possible roles in metadata responses there are some challenges that we need to consider:

• The same provider entity could be associated with one or more provider software (remember the speciesLink case with the regional servers approach).
• The same entity could play more than one role (usually a provider entity is also the host) in a service instance.
• The same service instance could be "provided" by more than one entity (although that's not usual, we could think about a joint between institutions that would be co-responsible for setting up and maintaining one or more services).
• Other networks could need different roles that we're not being able to anticipate.

Another missing point from the meeting was how to deal with multi-lingual metadata elements.

To address all these issues we have a new metadata proposal where:

• Each datasource service could have a list of related entities.
• Each related entity could play one or more role at the same time.
• Role values would not be defined by the protocol (networks would need to agree on the values and rely on software configurators to enforce their content).
• Each entity would have an associated Global Unique Identifier (GUID). Such identifier could be any type of string, although we would recommend it to be also a URL address pointing to an XML representation of the entity metadata. GUIDs would enable identification of entities across different service instances.
• Language aware elements would carry an xml:lang attribute.

Open issues:

• Metadata structure could be an extension from DublinCore.
• Should we include physical address for the entities?

Sample request

<request>
   <header>
      <source accesspoint="13.14.15.16" sendtime="2001-12-17T09:30:47-05:00" DatasourceMetadataProposalTwo>
   </header>
   <metadata/>
</request>

Sample response

<response>
   <header>
      <source accesspoint="http://mydomain.org/provider/wrapper.php" sendtime="2001-12-17T09:30:50-05:00">
         <software name="PHP Provider" version="1.1.4" DatasourceMetadataProposalTwo>
      </source>
      <destination accesspoint="13.14.15.16" DatasourceMetadataProposalTwo>
   </header>
   <metadata>
       <datasource>
      <label xml:lang="en">Birds Specimen Collection</label>
      <label xml:lang="pt_br">Coleção de Espécimes de Pássaros</label>
      <accesspoint>http://www.myorganization.org/provider/wrapper.php?res=ORG</accesspoint>
      ??? <typeOfContent>specimen</typeOfContent>
      <abstract xml:lang="en">This resource contains specimen records of birds from all over the world</abstract>
      <keywords xml:lang="en">bird, specimen</keywords>
      ??? <language>pt_BR</language>
      <citation xml:lang="en">how to reference and give credits</citation>
      <rights xml:lang="en">IPR stuff</rights>
      <conceptualSchema namespace="http://www.tdwg.org/dwc/2.0" numberOfRecords="100" dateLastUpdated="2004-08-01T20:00:00-03">http://www.tdwg.org/dwc/2.0/darwincore.xsd</conceptualSchema>
      <conceptualSchema namespace="http://www.tdwg.org/dwc/ext/curatorial/0.1" numberOfRecords="87" dateLastUpdated="2004-08-01T20:00:00-03">http://www.tdwg.org/ext/curatorial/0.1/c.xsd</conceptualSchema>
      <relatedEntities>
         <entity>
            <identifier>http://www.someorganization.org/mydata.xml</identifier>
            <name xml:lang="en">Biodiversity Informatics Institute</name>
            <name xml:lang="pt_br">Instituto de Informática para Biodiversidade</name>
            <acronym>ORG</acronym>
            <logoURL>http://www.someorganization.org/mylogo.gif</logoURL>
            <role>provider</role>
            <role>host</role>
            <description xml:lang="en">Cool organization</description>
            <relatedInformation>http://www.someorganization.org/</relatedInformation>
            <contact type="administrative">
               <name>Someone</name>
               <title xml:lang="en">Boss</title>
               <email>person1@someorganization.org</email>
               <phone>+111 11 111111</phone>
            </contact>
            <contact type="technical">
               <name>Someone else</name>
               <title xml:lang="en">Sysadmin</title>
               <email>person2@someorganization.org</email>
               <phone>+111 11 111112</phone>
            </contact>
         </entity>
         <entity>
            <identifier>http://dept.ins.org/mydata.xml</identifier>
            <name xml:lang="en">Department of Zoology - Institute X</name>
            <name xml:lang="pt_br">Departamento de Zoologia - Instituto X</name>
            <acronym>XZ</acronym>
            <logoURL>http://www.ins.org/dept.gif</logoURL>
            <role>owner</role>
            <description xml:lang="en">Cool department</description>
            <relatedInformation>http://dept.ins.org/</relatedInformation>
            <contact type="administrative">
               <name>Someone</name>
               <title xml:lang="en">Curator</title>
               <email>person1@dept.ins.org</email>
               <phone>+111 11 333333</phone>
            </contact>
         </entity>
      </relatedEntities>
       </datasource>
   </metadata>
</response>