This web site provides information related to service profiles and implementation in development for the US Geoscience information network (USGIN). It is meant to be a site where developers can learn about the standard in use, the objectives of the application profiles being developed, software being used or tested for implementation of services, and details about particular implementations. Forums are provided for asking questions about the services, profiles, and implemenation issues. You are invited to browse and register if you wish to post material or participate in discussions. Please share your experience with the development and use of interoperable web services for the geosciences!

Organization of this site

Organizations and Projects

This section includes a listing of all organizations and projects that are of interest to USGIN development. Organizations are entities identified by an organization name, and have some location or point of contact. Organizations employ people, provide infrastructure for activities, and fund projects. Projects are entities identified by some purpose; a project may involve multiple orgainizations, will have some project manager, may involve multiple people, and has one or more deliverable products.

Standards

Standards are documents that provide normative guidance for some activity. The standards of interest for USGIN are mostly concerned with protocols for communication between computer systems. A standard is sponsored and given authority by some standards organization (OGC, WWW, ISO, ANSI) that has a formal process for the development, review, approval, revision, and distribution of standards documents.

Profiles

Profiles are documents that provide guidance for the use of one or more standards for some particular application, as well as specifying some some aspects that are not treated in any of the standards documents. Profiles for particular geoscience information web services are the artifacts that define the US Geoscience Information Network; these constitute the community aggreements that make interoperability possible within the network.

Applications

Applications are computer programs designed to execute some useful function. In the USGIN context, numerous general purpose applications are in use that implement various services through profile specific configurations. The application section provides information about the various software packages that may be used to implement USGIN services.

Implementations

An implemenation is a documented use of some particular application or applications to make an operational instance of a service according to some profile. Implemenations are built on applications and profiles. The implemenation section provides forums for discussion between developers working on particular implementations, as well as tutorials and cookbooks for implementations that are considered operational and others may wish to duplicate.

Community

The community section is designed for interaction between community members. Content posted may be searched and filtered according to a variety of different criteria.