National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

A conceptual framework for integrated metadata management in large spatial databases is described. The primary function of this framework is to allow definition, location and control of metalevel information about the underlying database. The framework provides for a set of core metadata components and allows for addition of any auxiliary metadata that the user might want to define. The framework would support feature based retrieval as well as interactive browsing of metadata. The emphasis is on flexibility, extensibility and ease-of-use. The goal is integrated management of all kinds of metadata. The report gives an overview of semantic modelling of spatial data followed by a conceptual model for metadata. The basic tenet behind the conceptual model is classifying the database entities of interest into' data, process and environment entities. Corresponding to this, the metadata consists of metadata, metaprocess and metaenvironment entities. We then propose a forms mechanism to manage metadata. A set of basic operations for manipulating forms and catalogs is described. We present a case-study of metadata in a conventional Geographic Information System (GIS) environment. This is supported by the preliminary version of the schema for the Condor Database Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara.