Session 4A: Federated Catalogs and GEOSS Clearinghouse Joshua Lieberman Open Geospatial Consortium Jlieberman@traversetechnologies.com

Agenda What is federation? Integration? Centralization? Styles of federation Proper domains, communities, and governance Broker roles in service oriented architectures Distributed query protocols and strategies Metadata interoperability, semantics, and trust Role of the GEOSS Clearinghouse in the AI Pilot. What Clearinghouse offers are being made?

What is federation? Federation in governance (Wikipedia) A federation (Latin: foedus, covenant) is a union comprising a number of partially self-governing states or regions united by a central ("federal") government. In a federation, the self-governing status of the component states is typically constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered by a unilateral decision of the central government. Federation in identity (Wikipedia) In information technology, federated identity has two general meanings: The virtual reunion, or assembled identity, of a person's user information (or principal), stored across multiple distinct identity management systems. Data is joined together by use of the common token, usually the user name. The process of a user's authentication across multiple IT systems or even organizations. Federation in information systems (http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/busse99federated.html) “Constructed as an integrating layer over existing legacy applications and databases. They can be broadly classified in three dimensions: the degree of autonomy they allow in integrated components, the degree of heterogeneity between components they can cope with, and whether or not they support distribution.” Integration Subsumption of individuals into a whole Centralization Collection of distributed information into a single location

Styles of federation Top-down Bottom-up Peer-to-peer Third-party

Topic: Proper domains, communities, and governance Knowledge domains Information communities Governance

Broker roles in service oriented architectures Protocol access Information transformation Knowledge mediation Business overlay Trust establishment

Distributed query protocols and strategies Distributed query versus harvesting Stored / cached queries Update channels and messages Query differentiation Response translation Aggregation Query status messaging and user-client interactions Completeness and quality

GEOSS Clearinghouse Engineering Not an authority Not a repository Needs an operational entity in the Pilot context Relies on community catalogs Maintains registry metadata for operation (e.g. QoS)

Role of the GEOSS Clearinghouse in the AI Pilot Capability Scenarios Interaction with GEO Portal Digital divide Lifetime

Discussion - Clearinghouse Offers Offers (potential or needing clarification): FAO GeoNetwork (community catalog and software offer) Geodata.gov (community catalog offer) JRC INSPIRE Geoportal Catalog (community catalog) ESRI Geoportal (catalog software offer) ESA Eoportal (EOLI interface community catalog) Compusult Service Manager (catalog software offer) Categories Thematic catalogs which “could” harvest more content “Empty” catalogs which could be devoted to GEOSS resources for the pilot

Discussion “Political interoperability” - possible complementary efforts GEO technical capacity UNSDI mandatory governance Implementation strategies Stand up an existing empty catalog as an initial Clearinghouse to start gathering experience and support portal development (mainly harvesting) Should we support multiple initial Clearinghouses? ESRI Compusult GeoNetwork Finalize requirements for Clearinghouse software development (supporting policies of both distributed query and harvest) Leaves harvesting heterogeneity to deal with between the multiple instances. Examine effect of different harvesting strategies to decide Clearinghouse strategy. Work towards “groups” or key community catalog targets and eventually conformance recommendations for community catalogs

Community Catalogs (of Distinction) Geodata.gov ESA EoCatalog (HMA) INSPIRE Catalog FAO GeoNetwork ESG - Echo ? GCMD ? GBIF ?

Workplan Questions and Items How long should initial Clearinghouse instances commit to operation? What level of support / service? What community catalog commitments are to be requested, particularly from key instances? Quality of Service, support contact, .. What is the duration of the workplan? Update requirements in CFP based on feasibility and scenario needs. Evaluation, analytics Review / update distinctions and boundary between Clearinghouse and GEO Portal. E.g. proper metadata domains. Review / update sequence diagrams.