We are very interested in these problems though, and indeed David underplays a bit of what we've done, as nothing else integrates GeoNetwork and GeoServer at all. With GeoNode you can edit metadata in one place, and GeoNetwork and GeoServer both get the same abstract, keywords, title, etc., as well as automatically referring to one another. Like GeoNetwork's records point at the GeoServer services for the actual data, and the GeoServer capabilities documents refer to GeoNetwork's metadata. We do the metadata input in Django, and then it orchestrates the proper communication with GeoNetwork and GeoServer to keep them in sync.
So using GeoNode should get you a good step in the direction it sounds like you want to go, and we'd be psyched to collaborate on the issues you bring up. No matter what you'd probably have to replicate the integration we do have. Not sure how recently joined the list, but some collaborators at Harvard just shared the custom GeoNode they've been working on, see http://worldmap.harvard.edu/alpha I think their use case is fairly similar to yours, and GeoNode should be one of the best starting points. best regards, Chris On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 5:49 PM, David Winslow <[email protected]> wrote: > While we have plans to improve the situation, GeoNode currently provides > only very basic integration between GeoNetwork and GeoServer - one GeoServer > layer gets one search record in GeoNetwork. We don't make use of virtual > services at all right now. > > Eventually, we'd like to tie user groups in the GeoNode web application to > virtual services in GeoServer, and while I personally haven't given much > thought to what that would look like for GeoNetwork it would be fairly > straightforward to give each group its own record in GeoNetwork. > > Batch editing of metadata is another idea that we've discussed, but which > hasn't yet been implemented. We do update contact info in GeoNetwork when > user profiles are updated in the django app, but that is all. Metadata > editing is done through a web form and must be done one layer at a time. > > Hope this helps. > > -- > David Winslow > OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org/ > > On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 5:34 PM, Garey Mills > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Hi - >> >> We are evaluating GeoNode and have a couple of questions. We >> originally started out with the idea that we would integrate GeoServer >> and GeoNetwork and provide a portal that would search GeoNetwork. We >> liked the idea of GeoServer virtual services because they looked like >> they would give us some organizing tool so that we could enter metadata >> at the collection level rather than at the layer level. Another way of >> putting the idea was that we would create items in GeoNetwork that >> referred to GeoServer virtual services, rather than individual layers. >> This made sense to us because we are trying to offer our community a >> place to store, search and access a broad range of geocoded and GIS data. >> >> Would it be possible to do something similar in GeoNode? If not, >> how do you handle inputting metadata for each layer? >> >> Garey Mills >> Library Systems Office >> UC Berkeley >> > >
