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Registry
Registry
A central metadata registry is the key component in the
planned GBIF information architecture. Its purpose is to keep track of who is providing data, what services they offer, and what are the available datasets.
It will be the marketplace of global biodiversity data.
Anyone can then build their specialised portals and search services on top of the registry.
Its functions could include the following:
- Who is providing. This is a directory of organisations and their contact persons. Possibly an LDAP server.
- What services each provider offers. This would be an UDDI registry that gets its information from the providers with WSDL.
- What datasets are offered. This could be derived from the service descriptions, but in a simple version, RDF-formatted descriptions of the available datasets could be advertised by the providers. The published datasets would be described with the
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set.
With this information, the registy can then retrieve the metadata from the advertised datasets to build indices over taxonomic, geographic and temporal coverage.
Examples of such registries elsewhere and in other domains include
GBIF registry is planned to be available in 2003.
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