Applying Oracle Internet File System to Metadata Management and Advanced Search

Steven H. Wong and Hongli Luo
Southeast Fisheries Science Center, NMFS

This paper reiterates the need to integrate metadata into the data management system, and introduces an innovative application of the Oracle Internet File System (9iFS) to the metadata/data integration and search. The metadata are compliant to the Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata from the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). The conventional approach imposes limitations on metadata content management and data search due to the physical separation of data contents from metadata contents as individual files. These limitations include the lack of intuitive ways for users to access the metadata via data content and vice versa, and the inability to conduct a combination search based on both metadata and data contents. We will show our new approach of dealing with the data and metadata contents that allows users easily retrieve/update metadata information while working on the data content and vice versa. Another major feature of this new approach is that it enables the combination search on both metadata and data contents. The import and export utilities that we have developed make it possible for users to (1) incorporate (or import) FGDC metadata files into the Oracle 9iFS, and (2) export metadata contents in the Oracle 9iFS to FGDC metadata files in text, or HTML formats. The exported FGDC metadata files may be hosted in FGDC clearinghouse for data discovery.