19th International CODATA Conference
Category: Interoperability

XML Technologies And Its Application in MetaData Management System

Zha Xinzheng, Xiao Yun, Wu Kaichao, Wang Longxiao
Computer Network Information Center, CNIC, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P. R. China
(xzcha@sdb.ac.cn)

The Scientific Database Project (SDB) has been constructed by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) for more than 20 years. In the past years, a lot of data has been collected, classified and stored in different databases .Today, about 8.2 TB data resources are available through 313 online databases produced by 45 CAS membership institutes. Faced with so many data resources, we should attach great importance on how to represent and integrate them formally in order to exchange them conveniently and make use of them efficiently. We find Metadata and XML technologies are effective solutions to this question. So first We define a Specification that we called it Core Metadata Specification for Scientific Database. Then we adopt XML technologies to describe metadata. On the basis of them, we develop a set of information system called MetaData Management System. Essentially, metadata is a kind of data. In this paper, authors introduce the relations of Metadata, XML technologies and data integration, and then discuss XML Technologies and data representation, data modeling and data showing in scientific database. In addition, authors also show the application of XML Technologies in MetaData Management system.