Geospatial Librarian

Note: This is the third in a series of posts describing the metadata tools in ArcGIS.  ArcGIS contains several tools for metadata creation, editing, and transformations.  They are found in Conversion Tools - Metadata.  This post reviews the  Import Metadata  tool.   The Import Metadata tool can function as a series of tools.   First, it Upgrades the metadata to be imported into ArcGIS 1.0 metadata format.   Four options are offered:   FROM_ARCGIS - The metadata is already in the ArcGIS 1.0 format, so the Upgrade process is not necessary.   FROM_ESRIISO,  FROM_FGDC, or  FROM_ISO_19139  - If one of these parameters is chosen, the source metadata will be updated.  Next, it Imports the external metadata into the target.   Any elements from the source metadata will overwrite those fields in the target metadata. However, elements NOT present in the source metadata will not overwrite the target met...

This week's challenge: a head-scratching case of blank metadata records turned out to be an encoding problem. The situation: I processed a group of XML metadata files that looked fine and imported into GeoNetwork without issue.  I could view the records, but when I tried to edit one, I was presented with a blank screen. One issue was that the files were using this encoding: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>. I changed ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8, and reimported the files. This worked for some files, but several still presented blank pages. The diagnosis: The main problem was that the files contained illegal characters that remained after changing the encoding.  A few could be picked out in Oxygen, but many remained invisible.   The solutions: Find and delete problematic  ASCII codes. Solution #1: Terminal Command Enter this command: grep -n '[[:cntrl:]]' * Then view the offending XML using a terminal text editor such as vim or ...

The vast majority of the GIS datasets we will be including in the CIC geoportal are described with the FGDC metadata standard. A major goal of this project is to transform this metadata to the ISO standard. One effective method for achieving this is to first "Upgrade" the FGDC metadata to the ArcGIS 1.0 metadata format. The ArcGIS metadata format can function as a transitional file that will contain everything from the FGDC metadata, and possibly additional technical information. The final step is to transform the ArcGIS metadata format file into one or more ISO XML files. The ArcGIS 1.0 metadata format file The ArcGIS 1.0 metadata format was first introduced with Esri's 10.x ArcGIS applications. Previous versions of the software allowed the user to select a metadata style (generally FGDC or ISO) and create metadata XML files to associate with their dataset. Esri refers to this as a "stovepipe" model. ArcGIS stored the technical metadata separately ...

Transforming an FGDC XML to ISO in the Oxygen application and uploading to GeoNetwork. The last post discussed transforming an FGDC file to ISO using ArcCatalog, and the problem with https:// links not transferring. This illustrates an alternate method: using the application Oxygen. Use an FGDC to ISO19139 template in Oxygen.  Import to GeoNetwork with gmiTOgmd template selected. Step 1: Download NOAA’s csdgm2iso19115-2.xslt transformation file here: http://service.ncddc.noaa.gov/rdn/www/metadata-standards/metadata-xml/documents/csdgm2iso19115-2.xslt Step 2: Open the original FGDC file in Oxygen. Step 3: Select Document -> Transformation -> Configure Transformation Scenario(s). Step 4: Hit the button NEW.  A dropdown will appear.  Select XML transformation with XSLT Step 5: A box called New scenario will appear.  Fill in the following: Name:  anything of your choosing XML URL: use the default of ${curre...

One of the main tasks of the CIC project is to transform all of the existing metadata into the ISO19115 standard.  This can be done in a variety of ways, each with pros and cons.  We encountered a group of records where we were losing online linkages during this process.  Troubleshooting the problem led to some interesting discoveries. Issue:   A group of metadata files from one portal had online linkages in their FGDC metadata files.  When the Metadata Coordinator transformed these files using ArcGIS, the links disappeared.  What happened? Diagnosis:   ArcCatalog does not recognize Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure  ( HTTPS ) addresses .  It will save them in an ArcGIS 1.0 metadata format file, but will not export them to ISO. Solution: The ArcGIS template file can be edited directly to include https:// linkages in the transformation. Click here to go to the solution. Details: I inspected the original FGDC metadata file. Not...