How to Publish Metadata

How to Publish Metadata

The success of a Geoportal depends on the quality metadata records it hosts. Metadata must be published to the Geoportal and Approved before it can be discovered. Publishers can upload metadata or create metadata to publish it to the Geoportal. Steps below discuss how.

1. Become a Publisher
2. Create Metadata through the Geoportal Interface
3. Upload Metadata
4. Edit Metadata
5. Edit Metadata in an External Editor

Become a Publisher

There are three steps to becoming a publisher:

1. Create a regular registered user account
2. Send a message requesting to be made a publisher to the Geoportal administrator. Do this by clicking on the "Feedback" link at the top of the page, and writing an email from that interface. The Geoportal administrator will work with the Geoportal's security administrator to grant your login Publisher status.
3. Upon approval of your publisher status, additional tabs will appear in your interface the next time you log in to the Geoportal. As a publisher, you will be able to publish metadata through an online form (create metadata), upload metadata through the Geoportal interface, edit metadata you created in the Geoportal previously, publish metadata through ArcCatalog using the Geoportal extension Publish Client, or register your metadata repository for harvesting.

Create Metadata through the Geoportal Interface

The Geoportal Create Metadata interface is a useful tool for registering a data resource that does not already have metadata associated with it. It is also useful for registering metadata for a live map service.

• To create metadata in the Geoportal, first login as a publisher user. Then click on the "Administration" tab, and click the "Create" link at the top of the page.
• On the next screen, a list of the available metadata standards supported by the Geoportal will display. Click the radio button next to one of the standards. This is the standard to which the metadata you create in the Geoportal shall conform.
• A form with many fields will load. Fill out as much information as possible about your data resource. Fields shown in bold-italic are mandatory; the form will not publish if these are not filled out. Other fields are optional.
• When you have finished filling out the form, there are three options at the bottom of the screen. Choose any of them, according to their functionality:
  • Validate: submits the metadata form to the Geoportal and will report any errors or missing values necessary for the document to publish.
  • Save as Draft: Saves the metadata document with a "Draft" status. If you want to finish the record later, you will need to login, go to the Administration tab and select your draft document, and click the pencil icon to open the document in this Create form again.
  • Submit Metadata Registration: submits the form to the Geoportal.
• When you are ready to publish the metadata to the Geoportal, click the "Submit Metadata Registration" button and your record will be published. Remember that the record will not be retrieved by Searches until it has been approved by the Geoportal administrator.
• You can see your created record by clicking on the Administration tab. It will be listed in the table of records.

Upload Metadata

If you have metadata in XML form for your data resource and want to register it with the Geoportal, you can upload it from the Geoportal interface. You can also use the "Specify a network path" option to browse to a web location and upload multiple documents from the location, or create metadata for services listed at a network url such as ArcGIS Online. Metadata generated or published by this method is by default of the Dublin Core metadata schema, but this is configurable.



To upload, follow these steps:

• Login to the Geoportal
• Click the Administration tab
• Click the Upload link at the top of the screen
• Verify that mandatory elements are populated in your metadata document. If they are not, the document will not publish to the Geoportal. You can check the validity of the record by loading the record on the upload page and clicking the "Validate" link.
• There are two options for browsing to your file; choose one of them and browse to the file:
  • Browse for a local file: use if the metadata is stored on the machine from which you are accessing the Geoportal or is on a mapped network drive that is accessible from your machine.
  • Specify a network path: use if the metadata is available through a UNC path on your network or is accessible through a URL, or if you want to create metadata for services hosted online. Paste in the network location or URL.
    
    
    
    It is possible to publish content from ArcGIS Server REST services, ArcGIS Server REST folders, from an entire ArcGIS Server instance, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services, and GeoRSS feeds. The Geoportal will use the information available from the URL to generate a metadata document for the online resource. The table below shows format suggestions for syntax:

    Service Type	Example
    OGC WMS, WFS, WCS, WPS, SOS	http://sampleserver1.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/services/Specialty/ESRI_StatesCitiesRivers_USA/MapServer/WMSServer?request=GetCapabilities&service=WMS
    KML 2.0 and OGC KML 2.2	http://tin.er.usgs.gov/copper/output/copper-fLD.kml http://www.geodata.gov/Portal/rest/find/document?searchText=kml&isPartOf=geodata.gov&start=1&max=12&f=kml
    GeoRSS	http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/catalogs/1day-M2.5.xml
    ArcGIS Server Instance	http://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services
    ArcGIS Server REST Folder	http://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Reference
    ArcGIS Server REST Service	http://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Reference/MapServer/ESRI_Boundaries_World_2D

    Note: If you notice errors with uploading the service, you can verify that service is running by connecting to it in ArcCatalog or accessing it from a browser and thus rule out that the service itself is not causing the error.
• Click "Upload". After a few moments, you will receive a message saying one of the following:
  • Your document was published successfully. This means that it is posted in the Geoportal, and awaits administrator approval before it can be discovered through search.
  • Your document was replaced successfully. This means that it has replaced another existing document in the Geoportal with this uploaded version. This occurs when you are republishing a document to update it.
  • An error message. There are many different errors. Examples are failure to publish because the document is missing mandatory elements, failure because the metadata schema is unrecognized, or that the document itself cannot be parsed (the document may not be xml, or a valid schema).
• You can see your uploaded record by clicking on the Administration tab. It will be listed in the table of records.

NOTE: It is also possible to develop a custom client to perform insert, update, and delete operations to the Geoportal through the Geoportal transaction CS-W operations.

Edit Metadata

The metadata editor online form is accessed from the "Administration" tab, when a publisher or administrator clicks the pencil icon next to a record in the document table. The metadata editor facilitates creating and updating metadata quickly and in a consistent manner. Information input in the metadata editor online form will be used to create or update the raw XML for the metadata document.



Note: the ability to edit a published metadata record using the metadata editor online form is only available for records originally authored through the online form. This is by design; if records are published by other methods such as harvesting, the publish client, and uploading, then edits to the metadata should be made at the source and not on the copy maintained in the geoportal database.



It is possible to edit metadata published by other methods. See Edit Metadata in an External Editor for more information.

• Sections
  
  The metadata editor online form has different sections publishers can fill out. If a section has a blank box to the left of it, then it is not mandatory but optional. To activate that portion of the form and enter in information, put a check in the blank box.
• Mandatory Elements
  
  Mandatory elements are shown in bold type, and must be filled out or the document will not publish. If a publisher leaves a mandatory element blank, the geoportal will respond that the document failed to publish when the publisher submits the form. Some elements that are not mandatory become mandatory when its section is activated (activate a section by checking the checkbox next to it).

Edit Metadata in an External Editor (Optional)

To maintain the integrity of a metadata resource, it is highly recommended that metadata records be edited at their source. For example, if a document is maintained in ArcCatalog but published to the geoportal through the Publish Client, any further edits to the metadata should be done in ArcCatalog and then republished afterwards.



However, there are cases where metadata may need to be updated directly from the geoportal even if it is not authored with the geoportal's metadata editor online form. For example, if metadata for ArcGIS Server services is published by entering a network path on the Upload page, you may want to edit this metadata.



This can be done by using third party xml editors and the geoportal's REST interface. To edit metadata using this method, you will need to 1) have access to an XML editor, such as Altova® XMLSpy, 2) be the owner of the record you want to edit, and 3) know the REST url to the metadata document that you want to edit.



Procedure

1. Login to the geoportal. Verify that you are the owner of the record that you want to edit.
2. Procure the REST url for the record. Do this by searching for the record, and clicking on the "Details" link in the search result. The REST url for the record is at the bottom of the details page, and is prefixed with the following:
   
   
   
   /geoportal/rest/document?f=html&id=
   
   
   
   Note: the REST url will contain a document ID. This is not the same ID that appears in the browser URL, or that appears in the UUID column for the record in the Administration interface.
3. Copy the REST url and paste it into a text editor such as Notepad.
4. Also copy the following text and paste it in the text editor:http://server:port/geoportal/rest/manage/document/
5. Replace server with your geoportal server name and port with your port number. Copy the url after the "&id=" part of the REST url and paste it after 'document'. Example below:
   
   
   
   http://serverName:8080/geoportal/rest/manage/document/%7B2A850F59-354D-46BF-B63C-E8FB2B7B79A6%7D
6. Now that you have constructed the URL for connecting to the geoportal through the third party XML editor, you can make the connection. Open the XML editor software. Steps here describe the process using Altova® XMLSpy.
7. Click the File menu, and then Open URL.
8. Enter the URL that you have just constructed in your text editor into the dialog.
9. Provide your geoportal username and password.
10. Click OK.
11. Your document should appear as raw XML in the interface.
12. Make any edits necessary. When you save the file, the changes are reflected in the document available from the geoportal. There is no need to republish your document.