This setup guide for downloading GeoNetwork using Subversion, building using Maven 2, developing, deploying and debugging on Tomcat and Eclipse on Windows 7 64-bit still uses the MckoiDB and should be updated to use MySQL.

Introduction

This document was developed for GeoNetwork’s new Maven 2 based setup. See http://trac.osgeo.org/geonetwork/wiki/Maven for more information.

Note that several installation and configuration options may not be necessary for GeoNetwork development but can be necessary for other software development projects.

This document was compiled from experiments, notes, and web sites by the following contributors and sources (in alphabetical order):

This post describes a series of Python scripts to convert FGDC XML metadata for WMS and WFS services to ISO 19139 service metadata via GeoNetwork's OGC harvest service. Here are the steps:

1. Extract WMS and WFS GetCapabilities URLs from FGDC XML metadata and write them to a file.
2. Create a GeoNetwork Harvest Node from extracted GetCapabilities URLs and let GeoNetwork's OGC WMS/WFS harvester create ISO 19139 metadata from GetCapabilities response. Note: the resulting ISO 19139 metadata is only as good as the one in the GetCapabilities response. In addition, GetCapabilities responses do not include all fields necessary for minimum ISO 19139 metadata.
3. Copy some FGDC metadata entries (Title, Abstract, etc.) to newly created ISO 19139 metadata.

Our goal is to have working WMS and WFS metadata records in our CSW catalog that can be used to add the described services to analytical software such as ESRI's C-SW Client for ArcGIS Desktop. Following are the reasons why I am currently choosing this convoluted process instead of a direct FGDC to ISO 19139 metadata conversion:

Files: 

MultipartPostHandler.py_.txt

GeoNetwork offers a harvest service that, among other, follows a OGC WMS or WFS GetCapabilities URL and transforms the response into an ISO 19139 metadata record. Bear in mind that the resulting ISO metadata record is only as good as the GetCapabilities response and that the metadata can never be entirely ISO 19139 conformant without dummy values due to limitations of the OGC GetCapabilities schema.

GeoNetwork offers a handy user interface to add those "GeoNetwork Harvesting Nodes" and also exposes their functionality through a even handier XML service. See chapter 19.3 on "Harvesting Services" of the GeoNetwork opensource V 2.4 The Complete Manual. Following are my notes on creating an OGC harvesting node through GeoNetwork's harvesting service.

This group will focus upon GeoNetwork setup, configuration, and development. Any questions or comments are welcome!

Following are some resources that can help you learn about GeoNetwork:

It appears that the GeoNetwork WMS harvest selects an incorrect codeListValue for a service metadata record's srv:DCPList (Distributed Computing Platform). Currently, it enters HTTP-GET and HTTP-POST. However, there is a bit of confusion within GeoNetwork and among standards and profiles. Specifically, one could interpret a conflict between DCP in a service's GetCapabilities (OGC) and a service's metadata record (ISO):

Here is a tutorial on how to connect to GeoNetwork's MckoiDB through the Druid Database Manager: http://geonetwork-opensource.org/documentation/how-to/druid_dbms

Note that the GeoNetwork 2.4.2 installer will not prompt you to provide a MckoiDB user name and password. Those are generated automatically and stored in

\geonetwork\web\geonetwork\WEB-INF\db\account.prop

This is a Python example script for importing GeoNetwork Metadata Exchange Format 1.1 (MEF) archives to GeoNetwork 2.4.2's mef.import service. The mef.import service requires a multipart/form-data POST through a modified MultipartPostHandler.py library which now supports Unicode (urllib2). It has been tested in Windows XP and Python 2.6.

Files: 

gn_mef2mef.import_example.py_.txt

Files: 

MultipartPostHandler.py_.txt

This is an example Python script that showcases the creation of GeoNetwork Metadata Exchange Format 1.1 (MEF) archives from ISO 19139 metadata XML files.It has been tested in Windows XP and Python 2.6.

Files: 

gn_iso19139_to_mef_example.py_.txt

 This is an example Python script that showcases GeoNetwork authentication, session handling, and CSW transactions. 

Files: 

gn_csw_transaction_example.py_.txt

BUG: what I consider a bug
FEATURE: what I consider a missing feature
TODO: possibilities that need to be explored or decide on