A Metadata Specification for Scientific Databases in a Data Grid Environment

Li Jianhui (lijh@sdb.ac.cn), Xiao Yun, Yan Baoping, Hou Yanfei, Hu Lianglin
Computer Network Information Center, CNIC, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

The Scientific Database Project (SDB), supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), aims to Construct more than 300 scientific databases, and provides integrated data accessing service through the Scientific Data Grid (SDG). Metadata is a key issue for SDG implementation and scientific databases integration. So a metadata specification for SDB&SDG is required. After analyzed many metadata specification, such as Dublin Core (DC), Content Standard for Digital Geographical Metadata (CSDGM), ISO19115, Ecological Metadata Language (EML) and etc, we defined a metadata specification for SDG according to our requirements. We called it Core Metadata Specification for Scientific Database (SDB-CMS). In this specification “service” has been looked as important property of scientific database, and data accessing and using processes have been encapsulated as different services (Web Service and Grid service). In this paper, the authors introduce the content and structure of the SDB-CMS in detail, and then a universal metadata management tool be touched roughly. The implementation of SDB-CMS in SDB community, including 45 institutes, and the evaluation has been analyzed finally.