Environmental Resources Information Network

Australian Spatial Data Directory (ASDD)

Quarterly Technical Report

January - March 1999

Introduction

This quarterly report provides a technical status of the Australian Spatial Data Directory (ASDD). ERIN, Environment Australia, is coordinating the technical implementation of the directory.

At the end of March 1999, there were 14 nodes within the ASDD with a total of 19,774 dataset descriptions available for searching.

Statistics are provided for the ASDD covering number, compliance and reliability of nodes, number of hits and records per node for the months of January, February and March.

ASDD Implementation Consultancy- IndexGeo Pty Ltd

AUSLIG, ERIN and ANZLIC have jointly funded this consultancy.

Achievements during the past quarter

• "Status of ASDD nodes" application runs every hour to automatically interrogate each node to determine availability, count the total number of records, and determine response time. Sends automatic email to the node manager if the node is down for 4 out of 10 visits. Keeps logfiles of basic statistics.

http://www.ga.gov.au/asdd/tech/serverstatus/

• ASDD requirements added to the official "GEO Profile" which is the standard for Z39.50 access to geospatial dataset repositories.

http://www.ga.gov.au/asdd/tech/config.html#profile

• ANZMETA SGML/XML Document Type Definition (DTD) for Geospatial Metadata

http://www.ga.gov.au/anzmeta/

• Sought feedback on the draft DTD, finalised DTD and documentation. The DTD now facilitates extension for Page 1+ metadata elements. Added "thesaurus" attribute to the "keyword" elements to restrict the content to "controlled vocabularies" (authority lists of keywords).

• Lists of official Geographic Extent Names with Minimum Bounding Rectangles for each and lists of other official controlled vocabularies

http://www.ga.gov.au/anzmeta/thesauri.html

• Sought general ASDD feedback, gathered responses (about 100 items), prepared table of issues, prioritised the tasks.

• Conducted testing of each ASDD Z39.50 server.

• Concise description of each known solution for geospatial metadata management.

http://www.ga.gov.au/asdd/tech/manage.html

• Consistent banner added to every ASDD WWW page.

• Comprehensive ASDD technical documentation

http://www.ga.gov.au/asdd/tech/

• South Australian node moved from BRS to SA DEHAA.

• "ASDD Node managers" application to facilitate the concise description of each node and maintain the list of technical contact details. It is the responsibility of each node manager to utilise the online document management application to describe their node and update the node description whenever they choose.

http://www.ga.gov.au/asdd/tech/node/

• Upgraded "basic" and "spatial" search interfaces.

• Commenced technical assistance to individual nodes.

Expected during the next quarter ...

• Concentrate on technical assistance to each node especially ACT, QLD, TAS, NLA, SA.

• Begin WWW page of Frequently Asked Questions by node managers (gleaned from node assistance process).

• Assist WA, VIC, EA to develop framework for Page 1+ extended metadata.

• Make available current Isite package Isite-2.05

• Tweaks to technical documentation.

Nodes

The following table lists the nodes and the number of records per node that were accessible at 9 April 1999.

Usage

The total number of hits recorded for the ASDD pages on the Environment Australia web site for the months January to March 1999 was 21,357 compared to 16,152 for the previous quarter.

Usage for the months of January, February and March 1999 was 5786, 7556 and 8015 hits respectively. A breakdown of users by top-level domain for the each month is shown below:

Node reliability

A summary of node reliability for the period January to March is given below:

* This figure is for January and February alone as network access problems between ERIN and DLWC were encountered during March.

Node managers are automatically notified by email if a server goes down for a period longer than four hours.

Node descriptions

ASDD node descriptions

http://www.ga.gov.au/asdd/tech/node/

The following nodes now have concise descriptions.

It is the responsibility of each node manager to utilise the online document management application to describe their node and update the node description whenever they choose.

AUSLIG Data Directory

EA Environmental Data Directory (Green Pages)

IndexGeo Pty Ltd - Eco Companion catalogue

Queensland Spatial Data Directory

South Australia Spatial Information Directory

Victorian Spatial Data Directory