This is an ArcMap add-in application which can access the CSW Catalog Services to locate WMS services that can be added as layers in an ArcMap (v10) project. This is a simplified version of the ESRI CSW client for ArcMap (built from scratch) that is configured specifically to search the USGIN catalog (http://catalog.usgin.org/, ESRI Geoportal), the OneGeology catalog (http://portal.onegeology.org/, GeoNetwork OpenSource), and GeoData.gov (http://geo.data.gov/, ESRI Geoportal).

You can search for available services by key words (text box) or the extent of the ArcMap View frame. The search results will be displayed in the list box. The application checks for a successful getCapabilities request to determine if the service connection information in the metadata actually works, and enables the 'add to map' function for operational sevices. These services can be selected and added as layers in the ArcMap project.

The application utilizes the csw:record responses from the CSW services. The interesting part is dealing with the various intepretations of how the capabilities URL for the service should be encoded in the csw:record since the definitions of the Dublin core elements used are rather fuzzy....