GCube-SDI-Suite

gCube-SDI-Suite is a set of gCube java components that allows for the management of GIS resources (i.e. GeoSpatial DataSets, Metadata, Services..) in D4Science Spatial Data e-Infrastructure. It provides Java implementations of both client-side and service-side features, and it is built on top of OGC standards implementations. It is powered by gCube Features, fully integrating with the infrastructure.

Design

gCube-SDI-Suite is designed as a modular set of components, each of which can be used as dependency by another application. It fully relies on gCube for infrastructure integration.

The suite code can be found at [[1]], and it is distributed as the following maven artifact in gCube repositories :

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.gcube.spatial.data</groupId>
  <artifactId>gcube-sdi-suite</artifactId>
  <type>pom</type>
</dependency>

Philosophy

gCube-SDI-Suite aim is to to simplify developpers' life in managing GIS resources by

• Offering easy ways to perform common tasks
• Encouraging reuse of code by modularization of feature and reduction of dependency tree
• Isolating complexity of GIS resources management and infrastructure integration
• Allowing for easy extension of behaviour

Components

gCube-SDI-Suite main components are :

• SDI-Service the main service managing the SDI resources;
• SDI_Library the main library for clients;

Following components are also part of the suite :

• SDI-Interface java library with common classes definition;
• SDI-Test-Commons common library for test purposes;
• SDI-Generic-Client common library for Dynamic Clients;
• gCube-GeoServer-Client Dynamic Clients towards GeoServer REST API;
• gCube-GeoNetwork-Client Dynamic Clients towards GeoNetwork REST API;
• gcube-GeoServer-Connector internal library used to authenticate gCube calls towards Geoserver;

Use cases

Common use cases can be achieved as described in this section.

Using java clients

The best way to interact with the SDI is by using a provided java client described from SDI_Library.

Following clients can be selectively used to support publication and access :

• Metadata client: allows for common ISO Metadata publication use cases in the gCube SDI;
• gCube GeoNetwork client: offers a java client towards GeoNetwork REST API, fully integrated with gCube Infrastructure;
• Datasets client: allows for common GIS Dataset publication use cases in the gCube SDI;
• gCube GeoServer client : offers a java client towards GeoServer REST API, fully integrated with gCube Infrastructure;

Furthermore, the gCube GeoNetwork can be used to :

• Manage SDI subsystems in the VRE (i.e. GeoNetwork, GeoServer, Thredds..)
• Manage metadata templates
• Manage Application profiles
• Manage Credentials and configurations

Managing configurations

Configuration are managed as resources in the SDI. The best way to achieve context configuration is to interact with SDI-Service either by exploiting its REST interface or the provided java client.

HTTP Interfaces

The SDI is composed by various instances of web servers, exposing various HTTP APIs.

• SDI-Service exposes a REST api documented here;
• Subsystems (i.e. GeoNetwork, GeoServer, Thredds..) exposed interfaces may vary by implementation and versions. Instances endpoints and connection parameters should be retrieved by exploiting SDI-Service's REST interface. Moreover, their interface is usually managed by gCube Features offering gCube authentication support.