HR: 1340h
AN: SF23A-0040    [Abstracts]
TI: Utilizing the Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) standard to Enhance Interoperability between NASA and NOAA XML Metadata-Databases
AU: * Ritz, S A
EM: ritz@gcmd.nasa.gov
AF: SSAI, Inc., 10210 Greenbelt Road, Suite 500, Lanham, MD 20706 United States
AB: The NASA Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) and the NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) have been exchanging metadata content for more than a decade. Previous transfers of metadata were performed by a tedious process involving converting NCDC's Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM) formatted files to Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and then translating the files to Directory Interchange Format (DIF) using custom GCMD software. Finally, after extensive manual editing to fix mismatched and missing fields due to the two levels of translation, the files were committed to the GCMD database. The complete exchange of metadata was time-consuming and as a result, the NCDC metadata held in the GCMD was frequently out of date. In the Spring of 2004 both organizations began discussions to determine how to streamline the process of exchanging metadata. Since both systems currently hold metadata in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) format, we were in a position to utilize the latest tools available for translating XML. Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT), Version 1.0, is the W3C standard for translating one XML document to another XML (or HTML) document. Demonstrated will be the application of XSLT to transform NCDC's CSDGM metadata to DIF format for referencing in the GCMD XML database. Also shown are the methods and open source tools used for translating, parsing, and formating the XML. We have found that XSLT produces a more accurately translated metadata file with less loss of information and mismatched fields. Therefore, minimal manual manipulation is required and the time it takes to synchronize the database has been significantly reduced.
UR: http://gcmd.nasa.gov/
DE: 9820 Techniques applicable in three or more fields
DE: 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE (New category)
SC: Special Focus: Advances in Data Acquisition, Management, Analysis and Display [SF]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting