NSDI Clearinghouse WG Telecon

Wednesday, December 15 1999

12N-1:30P EST

Agenda - “Improving the Clearinghouse”

• Clearinghouse Review Group activities• Clearinghouse Status

– Current count and composition

– Registry and bug/enhancement reporting

• Software Reports– Isite Version 2.07

– Blue Angel Technologies

– RTS Networks USA (Enabletech)

• Report: Cook Inlet Information Management System

Telecon Attendees

• USGS Reston (and EPA)

• Wisconsin• USDA NRCS, TX• US Army Corps

CRREL• A/WWW Enterprises• Alaska GDC• NOAA NGDC

• RTS Networks (Enabling Technologies)

• Cornell University• James Madison Univ.• Blue Angel Techn.• Penn State Univ• Washington State DIS• NASA GCMD

Clearinghouse Review Group• A group of 11 has been convened to assist in

helping set direction for the Geospatial Data Clearinghouse. – to refine goals and strategies for the Clearinghouse – to assist in user and provider requirements

definition work with university researchers

• Members represent federal and non-federal government, academia, and the private sector.

Review Group Members

• James Wilson, James Madison University VA

• Sheena Beaverson, Illinois Geological Survey

• Gerry Daumiller, Montana State Library

• Peter Schweitzer, USGS

• Kelly Dilks, Army COE

• Dave Bergstedt, NBII

• Gene Vaatveit, ESRI

• Ron Birk, Intermap

• Terry Fisher, Natural Resources Canada

• Doug Nebert, FGDC Staff

• Marc Nadler, NASA GSFC

UCGIS Contract

• A research and implementation contract has been let to Oregon State University through the UCGIS to assess and improve usability of the Clearinghouse for targeted categories of users

• Best-of-breed concepts will be selected for the construction of various future interfaces to the Clearinghouse

Researchers

• Dawn Wright, OSU, is a geographer experienced in documenting and creating the Oregon Coast Clearinghouse Node and has interest in geographic interfaces

• Cherri Pancake, OSU, is a computer scientist who been involved in a number of human-computer interface projects funded by NSF

Overview• Title of project:

– Multi-Level, “Humane” Interfaces to Improve the Usability of the National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse

• Web site will be http://www.nacse.org/mhs– Text of proposal will be included here

• Timeline will be phased through CY 2000

Goals of Proposed Work

• Characterize target user groups and develop a series of related interfaces targeted at them

• Perform thorough evaluation of current national clearinghouse interfaces using usability engineering techniques

• Apply participatory design and iterative refinement techniques to develop improved interfaces

Why Usability Engineering?• Usability establishes how well software

supports the user– Ease-of-learning: how much effort to learn it?

– Ease-of-use: how much effort to remember how it works?

– Efficiency: how much effort to accomplish user’s tasks?

– Productivity: does it make the user more productive?

• Usability engineering– Science and practice of building software that is

more responsive to user needs and preferences

Initial Work

• 10 deliverables described in proposal

• Work in January and February will focus on first two

• Deliverable 1 - evaluation procedures...

Initial Work (cont’d)• Deliverable 2 - characterization of user

constituencies...– GIS Specialists (primary target of clearinghouses)

– scientific researchers

– governmental agencies (secondary target)

– business and industry

– educators and students

– general public

• Working with FGDC Review Team on case study examples for each group

• Review Team suggested addition of commerical data providers as additional group

Our Perspective: “Humane” Approaches to Metadata

• Problem: Metadata standards are intimidating to new users

• Lack of usability diminishes the quantity and quality of both of metadata and of searches for metadata– Data owners are likely to postpone metadata

definition as long as possible– Final metadata are often error-prone and/or less

than optimal

Example of Possible Interfaces We Might Develop

(Examples from DB interfaces)

• Configurable tool would reflect needs of a particular domain or target audience

• Simplified to minimize learning curve

• “Default values” and selection lists to reduce errors

Automatic Configuration to Specific Domains

(Example is a DB assistant)

“Software Assistant” would make it easy to:– Select subset of fields

– Define default values for some fields

– Retrieve lists of values for other fields

– Define prompts that are meaningful to this user audience

Configured interface would be constructed automatically

Lists of “field values” auto-matically entered and retrieved from a DB -- could be reused

Clearinghouse Status

• 180 Clearinghouse Servers now registered in the community, approximately half are international

• Six Gateways are installed to provide common, regional access to Clearinghouse

• Search forms are in flux: US and Intl placename lists available, MEL Java applet removed, new Java interface in construction

Registry Pages Now Available

• Clearinghouse registration is now processed via forms to an Access database for Clearinghouses worldwide

• Lets you add or modify server information or take it off-line temporarily

• Registration info is queued for review by staff before approving it to the database

• Forms are rebuilt soon after a registration is approved.

Registry Information

• Passwords are provided to all registrants to protect security of the system

• To access:

http://clearinghouse4.fgdc.gov/registry

• Note: Occasional JavaScript and Active Server Pages errors occur occasionally from certain browsers. Please report them and we will try to fix them

Bugs and Enhancements

• A bug and enhancement reporting system has also been implemented for all aspects of Clearinghouse

• Please enter all problems with Isite, metadata processing, Gateways, or searches here to form a full archive with tracking

http://clearinghouse4.fgdc.gov/fgdcreporting

Isite Status - Version 2.07

• Version 2.07 is about to be released

• Upgrading will be mandatory to maintain spatial searching with the existing gateways

• Spatial syntax has been modified to match that given in the Z39.50 GEO profile

Isearch - New Features

• Added support for thesaurus/synonyms

• Added numeric and date centroids (histograms) to generation of GILS locator records

• Virtual databases (search across multiple local indexes as one)

Isearch - Bug Fixes

• Fixed Iindex append bug

• Fixed Iindex to store relative paths when specified

• Fixed extent bug in Iindex

• Miscellaneous internal fixes

Isite - New Features• Revised spatial search syntax (GEO 2060)• Better GILS/GEO alignment• Virtual databases• Support for new MIME-based Z39.50

record syntax OIDs• Support for GRS-1 record syntax

(undergoing testing)• Support for links to MySQL• Indexing of remote metadata

Isite - Bug Fixes

• Fixed zserver hang under Solaris 7 related to child processes

• Fixed random crashes in zserver

• Fixed spatial term order problem in zgate

• Fixed Isearch problem with date searches inflicted by virtual databases

• Tested for memory leaks with Insure++

Outstanding Issues

• Problems with record syntax through Blue Angel gateway

• Occasional date search oddities

• Occasional spatial search glitches (related to date line?)

• Problem doing synonym expansion in Boolean queries

Blue Angel Technologies

• Clearinghouse Gateway Version 3.3.3 released– Supports re-formatting of XML metadata!– Fixes the ~40 database search limit– Supports client stubs to other protocols

including CORBA and “XER”

• Will be installed at all Gateways by mid-January

Blue Angel Technologies (cont’d)

• Remote commercial harvester and indexer has been tested to fetch, index, and present metadata from multiple websites in XML form.

• Will be installed at FGDC soon

http://www.blueangeltech.com/servlet/fgdc Select “Crawled Data”, review results return format!

RTS Networks

• Previously known as Enabling Technologies (www.enabletech.com)

• SMMS metadata management software now supports the NBII/Biological Profile of FGDC metadata

• Server and management product will include a compliant Z39.50 server in the mid-late January timeframe

Cook Inlet Information Management System

• Project undertaken between the State of Alaska and other regional organizations to create a virtual distributed search system to include FGDC Clearinghouse and library resources

• Primary contractor: SAIC • Implements Blue Angel MetaStar Enterprise Suite

of software including Harvested• First Phase Completed on the Web

CIIMS information

“...The CIIMMS prototype web site is the first step toward the development of a comprehensive information retrieval system, based on the latest Internet technologies, that will enable a wide range of users to search, browse, and contribute valuable information about the Cook Inlet watershed and Cook Inlet related projects and activities. Currently, the CIIMMS search provides access to six distributed sources of data and information.”

http://www.dec.state.ak.us/ciimms/

CIIMS Project

• Project is willing to share expertise in the full range of Blue Angel software products that they have used to interface with external community servers.

Other Items

• Next telecon in three months, as needed

• Send your comments in to us if you want a targeted topical discussion

Support@clearinghouse3.fgdc.gov