GeoNode and GeoNetwork
ByronCinNZ
I am new to this list and am hoping to get advice, opinions and
whatnot from the GeoNode community on using GeoNode vs other
GeoNetwork interfaces for a project that we are about to start
developing for a client. I have been using and designing GeoNetwork
implementations now for several years and am interested in all things
GeoNetwork, geospatial metadata, and geospatial cataloging in general.
I am also a fan of Django and Pthon in general and have developed
metadata support tools in that environment. So GeoNode appeals to me.
But I do not quite understand the aim of GeoNode and how it differs
from that of the GeoNetwork project. I know that GeoNode includes a
stack of software in addition to GeoNetwork, but not really,because
with the exception of GeoWebCache, GeoNetwork includes all the same
packages.
I have examined the GeoNode demo site and have come to a few of my own
answers to this - like GeoNode puts more emphasis on the mapping
interface than GeoNetwork. But I would like to hear from the GeoNode
community their view of the differences and the relationship between
the two.
I also have a more particular question. We currently have a project we
are about to start that involves the implementation of GeoNetwork to
create a geospatial portal for metadata capture, discovery and data
sharing. A fully bespoke search (with map) interface is not part of
this project but customizing an existing one to their look and feel
is. So I am wondering about the suitability of GeoNode to this
purpose. Some of the things they want are searching via a map
interface with the footprints shown, the ability to search within a
search and the ability to limit and sort the results in a variety of
ways. Another requirement is that metadata be stored in the ANZLIC
profile of ISO 19115. Can GeoNode provide this?
Also, can you share with me, or point me to documentation describing
how metadata capture is handled by GeoNode? And are all the tools for
metadata harvesting provided by GeoNetwork still available in GeoNode
and if so how are they managed?
As I said, python and django are environments that i like working in
and I have created automated metadata capture tools in python in the
past that integrate with GeoNetwork. So I like the idea of GeoNode. I
hope it will suit my needs.
Cheers,
Byron Cochrane
LISAsoft
Chris Holmes
I'd say the core philosophical distinction is GeoNode focuses on data,
then users, then metadata. GeoNetwork focuses on metadata, with some
ways to add in data. GeoNode tries to extract as much metadata as
possible from the data and from actual use. It's about being able to
find and _use_ the data, not just make a catalog of data, which may or
may not include the data or services for the data.
The focus on data means we strive to make it super easy to upload
data, eventually in lots of different formats, and have it all served
up automatically in all available formats. It's made easy to access
and refer to, with a URL to a page with the data and the metadata.
Like http://geonode.opensandiego.org/data/sangis:library It's not
just a bounding box, it's the actual data so you can see it's rough
distribution, and you can easily make a map of it, combining with
other data. It has links to the services, but also direct links to
formats people may want from the services. I always wonder how I am
supposed to give someone a link to a layer in a WMS. Is it the
capabilities document? A top level tile? Or a catalog response in
ISO19115 that gives me the service links? Also when you upload data
you can style it right there, with through the web SLD editor, to
customize it a bit and make it look right for display.
Then we bring in users, with user profiles. Every data set is
associated with a user, and that user info populates the ISO metadata
fields, so you don't have to fill it out every time. You can see what
a user does - http://demo.geonode.org/profiles/cholmesny/ And in the
future we'll let you follow a user and have groups as well. We also
have really fine grained security, with an easy to use permissioning
GUI. So when you upload data you can set who can see it, who can edit
it (right now just the metadata, sometime soon will be editing of the
actual data as well). These permissions are deep, down to the level
of the web services of GeoServer, so people won't be able to access
those layers unless they're signed in.
From users and data we get to metadata. We use GeoNetwork as the CS-W
engine. But we try to auto populate as much as possible from the
users (who owns it from their profile) and the data (extract bounding
box, etc). We also plan to focus more on other 'metadata' from users
like how often the data is viewed, commented, rated. Plus we make
'maps' a top level concept that people share and use, so you can more
easily explore data, and from there also derive more metadata (if 5
maps that all use the same layer have a tag 'fire' then perhaps that
layer is about fire). Another thing GeoNode does is always coordinate
the right links between the capabilities documents of the CSW and
WMS/WFS/WCS, so each refers to the other, and also contains the same
abstract, keywords, etc.
And then we also have Django in there to help people make dynamic
websites, not just 'portals'. So that web developers and designers
can more easily customize it, have a site be some other focus, instead
of just on searching and finding geodata.
In my mind GeoNetwork provides four main things - Portal site
development, metadata editing (and permissioning), CS-W and various
catalog protocols, and harvesting capabilities. GeoNode just uses the
latter two, doing the first two in Django. In my ideal world
GeoNetwork would be split up in to four separate projects that do each
of those. Harvesting in particular would be nice if we could use but
just expose an alternate UI in GeoNode.
And in general I think right now GeoNode offers much better
integration between GeoServer and GeoNetwork. Though we are
interested in evolving things so those two can talk more directly to
one another. The GeoWebCache integration is also nice, as any data
uploaded gets automatically cached, even as you change and add new
styles.
As for your particular questions:
I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'adapting an existing one (map) to
their look and feel'. They already have a custom map that does the
functionality you describe? Or you're going to build that?
In general GeoNode is quite geared to incorporating other custom
functionality. Indeed part of the reason the normal front page is so
boring is to help encourage people to do nicer things there. See like
http://tsudat.nci.org.au/tsudat2-client/ It's a GeoNode, but a nice
custom map that runs tsunami models is the most prominent thing. So
you can easily make a custom map interface, with GeoNode powering it.
I'd recommend you use GXP, the library that the GeoNode Map Composer
is based on, as then you'll be able to easily call on a lot of the
functionality. That's what tsudat does, and also
http://worldmap.harvard.edu/ (with a lot of their changes in the
process of getting in to GXP core for others to use). For an ability
to do some similar stuff to what you want with GXP see
http://sfmta.demo.opengeo.org/As-Built-Viewer/image-browser There
should be some good stuff to help you with data searches.
Bart at OpenGeo just created a great tutorial on GXP for foss4g, see:
http://workshops.opengeo.org/gxp/
As for ANZLIC / ISO19115, GeoNode supports 19115 out of the box. I
don't think anyone has yet fully investigated what's needed for the
ANZLIC profile, but OpenGeo has a pretty big project for Australia and
New Zealand, so will need to support it before too long, and would be
happy to collaborate.
Metadata in GeoNode is mostly a manual process. I believe on the
roadmap is being able to upload an existing metadata document and
slurp it in. If harvesting is needed then GeoNetwork is what we would
use. But I should note that with GeoNode's goal to always have the
data close I think we're less inclined to think about just harvesting
a bunch of remote catalogs that have a lot of metadata. We think more
in terms of 'federation', where you'd add in WMS Servers and other
GeoNodes (though that functionality isn't available yet), so you can
always have and work with the data. As far as I know no one in the
GeoNode community has worked much with GeoNetwork's harvesting tools,
but I think it should be possible to use them.
What's your actual use case for harvesting? I think it'd be great to
have more functionality in GeoNode for that type of thing, and I
believe we could leverage GeoNetwork's tools for it.
best regards,
Chris
many....@gmail.com
I know this is a very old post, However re your description here, I have one question. From the OGC standards I see that Geonode only supports WMS, WFS, WCS, CS/W and WMTS. As now a days, one of the most popular data is dynamic and sensor data, my question is, does geonode support SensorThings or SWE such as SOS?
Best regards
Mani