GCat Background

** THIS DOCUMENT IS A DRAFT **

gCube Data Catalogue.... using CKAN.

CKAN is a powerful data management system that makes data accessible – by providing tools to streamline publishing, sharing, finding and using data. CKAN is an open-source DMS (data management system) for powering data hubs and data portals. CKAN makes it easy to publish, share and use data see: http://ckan.org/

gCube Data Catalogue Metadata

A Metadata in the gCube Data Catalogue is made by two parts: CKAN's default metadata fields and gCube Metadata Profile.

• CKAN's default metadata fields

Those are metadata fields common for all metadata types in the gCube Data Catalogue (and used by default in the CKAN platform).

Label	Field Name (API)	Definition	Guidelines	Example
Title*	title	Name given to the dataset.	Short phrase, written in plain language. Should be sufficiently descriptive to allow for search and discovery.	Aquaculture Production and Consumption in Africa (2011)
Description	description	Short description explaining the content and its origins.	Description of a few sentences, written in plain language. Should,provide a sufficiently comprehensive overview of the resource for anyone,to understand its content, origins, and any continuing work on it. The,description can be written at the end, since it summarizes key,information from the other metadata fields.	This dataset contains attributes of aquaculture production and,consumption for each of Africa’s provinces in 2011. The data was,provided by………
Tags	tags	An array of Taxonomic terms stored as tags	Taxonomic terms	Access to education, Bamboo
License*	lincese_title	the license that applies to published dataset.
Organization*	organization	Organization the datasets belongs to	See list of organizations on https://ckan-d-d4s.d4science.org/organization	D4Science
Version	version	Version of dataset	Increase manually after editing	1.0
Author*		Owner of dataset		Joe Bloggs
Author Contact*		Contact details of owner		joe@example.com
Uploader*		Uploader of the dataset	The person who created the dataset	Joe Bloggs
Uploader Contact*		Contact details of uploader	The email or other contact details of the person who created the,dataset. Only visible to administrators of the uploader's organisation.	joe@example.com

mandatory fields are marked with an asterisk (*)

• gCube Metadata Profile

gCube Metadata Profile defines a Metadata schema XML-based for adding custom metadata fields.

A gCube Metadata Profile is composed by one Metadata Format (<metadataformat>) that contains one or many (<metadatafield>). The schema is the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8">
<metadataformat>
    <metadatafield>
        <fieldName>Name</fieldName>
        <mandatory>true</mandatory>
        <isBoolean>false</isBoolean>
        <defaulValue>default value</defaulValue>
        <note>shown as suggestions in the insert/update metadata form of CKAN</note>
        <vocabulary>
            <vocabularyField>field1</vocabularyField>
            <vocabularyField>field2</vocabularyField>
            <!-- ... others vocabulary fields -->
        </vocabulary>
        <validator>
            <regularExpression>a regular expression for validating values</regularExpression>
        </validator>
    </metadatafield>
     <!-- ... others metadata fields -->
</metadataformat>

It's possible to validate a Metadata Format schema using following dtd...

ADD DTD