XML Lifecycle

One of the goals of the Curator Project is to facilitate the transfer of metadata from model components into science portals in an automated way. This goal is being achieved through two mechanisms:

ESMF XML export capability: ESMF now contains an attribute description capability that includes ability to export attributes as XML. This XML is cabable of being harvested by a variety of systems.
ESG XML harvest capability: Software was created in the summer of 2008 to enable ESG to ingest the XML files that ESMF outputs as part of its attribute capability. This includes the ability to harvest the metadata from any number of XML files located in a directory and populate that information to web. Figure 1 below provides a more detailed description of the steps in this process.

Diagram of the XML lifecycle. Metadata exported from an ESMF attribute capable model component is harvested and placed into a series of Java objects. These objects enable the metadata to be transferred to a relational database. ESG then converts the information in the database to RDF and places it in a Sesame Store. This store can then be searched with the results being displayed on the web via a user gateways. [Image courtesy of Rocky Dunlap of Georgia Tech]