Proposal to determine distribution format from ISO gmx:mimeFileType

[antjacques]

Dear all,

I work as a subcontractor for Luxembourg INSPIRE/HVD catalog. We recently had conversation with people implementing HVD GeoDCAT metadata in European Data Portal about distribution format.

Currently ISO19139 gmd:distributionFormat node allows to indicate several formats but it is unfortunately not possible to associate it with the right gmd:transferOptions. This matter is partly addressed in ticket #8
For example a case where we have an INSPIRE dataset available as GML and ZIP format:

We took the opportunity to use the gmx:MimeFileType rather than the default gco:CharacterString because it is something that we can natively configure in GeoNetwork UI:

In facts, when filling in the “Format” field in the configuration of the transfer option, it will automatically change the gmd:CI_OnlineResource/gmd:name/gco:CharacterString to gmx:MimeFileType. Resulting in those:
GUI

XML

If it’s not too much work, we think it could be a good improvement to your ISO-DCAT mapping to include this case that might be used by other member states since it is a standard field in GeoNetwork. Ultimately, it should:

• Take the gmd:name/gmx:MimeFileType/text() value to the distribution name
• Take gmd:name/gmx:MimeFileType/@type/string() value as the distribution mediaType rather than gmd: distributionFormat which might provide the same format for every distribution in the dataset (at least, that's the current behaviour on European Data Portal).

Don't you think that it's a good compromise to encode format in ISO distributions? Then it could be mapped to IANA mimetype list for instance.

Best regards

[laers]

That looks indeed interesting.

We use ISO19115-3 instead of 19139 but the approach should be the same.

Can I ask how you have configurated the associated-panel in the GN UI? Especially how you have added the "Format" field.

I can not find this field in the configuration .json file (19115-3)

Br Lars

[antjacques]

Hi @laers, sorry for the late answer, I wanted to check this with our catalog admin first.

Apparently it is normal behaviour in GeoNetwork: when you create a new transferOption the "Format" field isn't displayed. You can however access this field when editing the newly created transferOption.

Hope this helps

[antjacques]

@laers have I answered your question? Have you managed to reproduce this format implementation?

@jescriu I don't know if this suggestion will be discussed during a future GeoDCAT-AP Pilot meeting? Let me know if you need extra information, happy to help