Metadata catalogues in spatial information systems

Abstract

This paper gives the short review of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) metadata catalogue services that have the key role in geospatial resource discovery in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). The notion of Spatial Data Infrastructure comprises a collection of technologies, policies and institutional agreements that provide an easier access to geospatial data. The SDI is suitable for usage in geospatial data discovery, evaluation, and also various applications within government, commercial and non-profit sectors, academic institutions, etc. Metadata catalogue services have been specified in OGC Catalogue Service Implementation Specification. The part of the specification that specifies a web interface that supports the storage, retrieval, and management of data related to web services, is called Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW). Metadata catalogues are service brokers that represent a key component in a service-oriented architecture that manages shared resources and facilitates the discovery of resources within an open, distributed system. OGC services have gained significant popularity in recent years and the number of organizations using them has increased. However, the full potential of metadata catalogues has not yet been reached, not only because of the lack of appropriate documentation of data in the form of standardized metadata, but because the lack of semantics of the data. The analysis of the usage of metadata catalogue services in geodetic information systems has been given and the proposal for a possible solution for improvement has been made.