A Web-Based Geospatial Metadata Browser

We are developing a simple Web-based browser for the search and display of earth science metadata. Our design goals are: 1. to permit both map-based (geographical) and forms-based (textual) searching; 2. to integrate a wide variety of data types in a hierarchical fashion; 3. to conform to the FGDC metadata standard; 4. to take advantage of existing open source software wherever possible; 5. to be platform-independent, browser-independent, and "robust" (i.e. avoid application layers which are resource-intensive or behave unpredictably, such as Java applets); and 6. to present metadata in a dynamic fashion via live database connections. Our implementation is based on the MapServer GIS platform (developed at the University of Minnesota with NSF and NASA funding), PostgreSQL relational database management system, and PostGIS geographic database extensions (developed by Refractions Research Inc and available under GNU Public License). All of these packages are well-documented open source software and have been proven in commercial-grade applications. We combine geographical searching (click-and-drag on maps, in both global and polar projections) and textual searching (drop-down menus organized by FGDC category) for a range of geophysical, chemical, and biological data types. A corresponding framework for collecting and ingesting earth science metadata is reported elsewhere at this meeting (Chayes & Arko, "Real-time Metadata Capture Implementations").