WES Catalog

A comprehensive, standards based, catalog creation and management application providing discovery, publishing, access and maintenance of web-based service metadata.

Overview

WES Catalog is a catalog toolkit providing discovery, publishing, access, harvesting and maintenance of web-based services metadata. WES Catalog supports the following metadata standards:

• Department of Defense Metadata Standard (DDMS)
• ISO 19115
• Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)
• Dublin Core
• MARC 21
• DIF

The Application interfaces with the Application Server using the OGC Catalog Interface specification. In this case, the Application Server will draw upon a local metadata store (Oracle RDBMS) to respond to the Catalog Service request. The interface to the local metadata store is internal to the Application Server.

The WES Catalog architecture has been specifically designed to be deployed in a multi-tier arrangement of clients and servers. Discovery of services is provided through WES Catalog service interfaces, which enable clients to locate service metadata quickly and effectively.

The multi-tiered architecture is illustrated below

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The application also has a metadata harvest process that will automatically ingest service metadata from Web-services servers and clients.

WES Catalog is a component of Compusult’s Web Enterprise Suite; a set of Internet-based applications and toolkits that support Web mapping, information cataloging, discovery, retrieval and delivery services.

WES Catalog is also a contributor to the Open Geospatial Consortium Catalogue Services Interoperability initiative.

WES Catalog contains the following integrated components:

• WES Explorer

• WES Publisher

• WES Gazetteer

WES Explorer

A WES Catalog component, WES Explorer provides catalog discovery functionality through the WES portal interface.

Overview

Through the WES Portal interface, users are presented with three different catalog search options, which are: 

• WES Keyword Search

WES Keyword Search is presented to users usually directly at the home page. Users can enter a "search term" in order to conduct a high-level text search of the catalog.

• WES Simple Search

WES Simple Search is provided as a a"quick-start" link off the main home page and brings users directly to a "Search Catalog" form page. This page allows users to refine their search by selecting one or more dynamic filter options available as selection check boxes.

• WES Advanced Search

WES Advanced Search provides all the functionality of the Keyword Search and the Simple Search but provides several new features such as definable geogrpahic extent and temporal parameters.

WES Advanced Search provides a map-based interface that can be used to draw an Area of Interest (AOI), which will proivde input parameters for the catalog search based on a geographic area as defined by the AOI. Geographic coordinates may also be entered, and time periods for data discovery can also be specified.

WES Publisher / Harvester

Allows users to publish and register geospatial applications, services, styles, data and data products into the catalog.

Overview

The WES Publishing client is available as a JSP application that provides the ability for Data Custodians to publish and register geospatial applications, services, styles, data and data products into the catalog.

The WES Publisher supports the following content: 

• all metatdata records according to FGDC, CSDGM 1998, ISO 19115:2005 and its derived profiles;
• all metadata records of dynamic Web services, i.e., WMS, WFS, WCS, WPS, other OGC endorsed standards, GDAS; and,
• all metadata records of Web content and encodings, i.e., WMC, GML, SLD, FE.

WES Gazetteer

Compusult's WES Gazetteer is an easy to install, standards based gazetteer with lightning fast name look-up. 
 

Overview

Web Enterprise Suite (WES) Gazetteer is an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) - enabled gazetteer service that provides world coverage for place name look-up services.

A gazetteer is list of geographic names, together with their geographic locations and other descriptive (metadata) information.

Diagram of WES Gazetteer:

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WES Gazetteer place names and associated metadata is populated in a database and is composed of content from the following sources:

• NGA Gazetteer - The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's (NGA) database of foreign geographic feature names. Coverage is world-wide, excluding the United States and Antarctica.
• Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) - Developed by the USGS in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN), contains information about almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features in the United States.

This service is available on both UNIX and Windows® platforms, contains easy installation procedures and standards-based interfaces for searching, discovery and access in the HTTP computing environment.

WES Gazetteer is a component of Compusult’s Web Enterprise Suite; a set of Internet-based applications and toolkits that support Web mapping, information cataloging, discovery, retrieval and delivery services.

WES Gazetteer is also a contributor to the Open Geospatial Consortium Catalogue Services Interoperability initiative.