I Want More Like This!

Last night I was reading Peter Morville's book on Information Architecture and apparently my brain did some batch processing overnight. Getting up before the rest of the house has the benefit of doodling a bit with some ideas I got delivered from my brain this morning.

I never knew there was a term for it, but apparently I was thinking of growing pearls. Every website has it. Even our Geoportal Server has it, but it's a bit underused at the moment and it's such a nice feature.

The Geoportal Server allows for searching for content as well as for browsing the catalog. The browse tree configuration essentially comes down to defining a number of searches (call them facets) that are listed. Typical examples are showing content by type or theme. This works well for those facets that have a limited domain.

The mechanism of browsing the entire catalog is also available for individual items. Open the Relationship page for an item and you'll notice a similar tree structure:

We searched (on the Geoportal sandbox site) for Redlands and then went to the details page for the map service returned. from there we see in the Relationships page that this map service 'operates on' a dataset for the ESRI Redlands Campus.

This relation is determined from the content metadata (see the full metadata for the items) using the ISO construction for this type of relation.

However, the Geoportal Server can do more than navigate relations included within the metadata. It can infer relations based on other things, like where did the metadata come from, who published it, and even show content with similar tags/keywords.

To enable this, you'll need to edit a few configuration files. No coding required.

Once you've setup your editing environment of choice, open .../geoportal/WEB-INF/classes/gpt/search/browse/browse-resource.xml. This file controls the relationships that will appear for individual resources (note: you'll see the structure for the overall Browse navigation in this same location).

The structure of this file is simple and reflects a basic tree of <item> elements:

The secret sauce is in the <query> element in this structure. In the overall Browse tree you'll find elements that essentially are basic 'fixed' searches like so:

<query>dataCategory=farming</query>

In the structure for the individual items, the element defines a search based on one of the indexed fields of the item at hand, like so:

urn:esri:geoportal:browse:resourceRelationship:keywords-keywords

In this example, the search generated will take the indexed keywords for the current item and then formulate a query based on that. This will be specific to every item and thus results in finding other related items.

The above example includes a couple similarity relations that will find other items with similar keywords/tags, similar content type, were harvested from the same repository (think other web services harvested from the same ArcGIS Server for example), and were published by the same publisher (111 items from NOAA's Coastal Services Center in the below example). From there you can filter and repeat your way through the catalog.

With the capability of adding your own fields to the Geoportal Server index, this allows you to build a rich network of related items that will give your users a different approach to finding interesting content from a single starting point: pearl-growing.

Next time I may write about 'berry-picking' or 'lobster trapping'. You never know what you end up finding in the field of information retrieval.

Are we there yet?

Is anybody home?
It's been three weeks since we announced that the Esri Geoportal extension would be released as open source. It may have seemed a bit quiet since, but rest assured, a lot has happened.

In my previous post I indicated we were looking at a Creative Commons-esk license model. Several people pointed out that this license is not recommended for source code. And yes we did see the FAQ on that topic.

And so started a quest for an appropriate license model that would give everyone: developers, implementers, and (sorry folks!) Esri what they need. If there only was a geek channel on TV. this would have made a great 'America's next top (license) model' show.

Along the way we revisited a great resource collected by the state of Massachusetts IT Division. It’s a bit dated, but the basics still apply.

While Esri has experience with open source from a licensing-in perspective, with the Geoportal extension going open source, we're flipping into a new role for the first time of licensing-out Esri software under an open source license.


From the 50+ (!) models discussed in that spreadsheet, it would have been great fun to use the Motosoto or Sleepycat license models, just because of their names. But no, we didn't select either.

Geoportal Extension will be released under the Apache 2.0 license!

Are we there yet?

Almost. We now have the task of moving source code, documentation, and such to a public source repository and find a proper way to integrate/link with the Esri websites (resource centers and such). But with this big step made, we're getting close.

Geoportal Extension to Become Open Source

Despite code documentation and samples as included on the Geoportal Resource Center, implementers of the Geoportal Extension have continued asking for source code access to support integration with content management systems, map viewers, desktop etc.

Esri listened to these requests and I am happy to be able to announce that:

the Geoportal Extension will enter a next phase in its evolution and become a Free and Open Source solution from Esri.

Seven years ago we created what was then called the GIS Portal Toolkit as a software and services solution, based on code from a number of earlier projects and prototypes for data discovery and map viewing. 

Since starting with GIS Portal Toolkit, those using it to create geoportals and clearinghouses have had access to its source code. Understandably, as people looked at creating websites that reflected the organization's identity.

At version 9.3 this resulted in Geoportal becoming a fully supported extension with a full maintenance program. We put a lot of effort in making Geoportal Extension configurable to a large extent with respect to authentication, metadata profile support, the index used for discovery, localization, skin development, and more.

The Geoportal Extension will be released under one of the variants of the Creative Commons open source license and will include elements like:

• Geoportal Web application
• OGC CSW 2.0.2 catalog service with OGCCORE and ISO Application Profile support
• INSPIRE compliant discovery service
• Extensible FGDC, ISO, DC metadata support
• Configurable search engine including spatial ranking algorithm
• Federated searches to standards-based (CS-W), Web 2.0 (OpenSearch), or other types of search providers (CMS, Document Management Systems, …)
• CSW clients (.NET + Java)
• Data Discovery Widget for Flex
• Data Discovery Widget for Silverlight
• Data Discovery Widget for HTML
• Ontology Service (java webapp)
• WMC clients (.NET)
• Publishing client (.NET)

We have some administration to do, but check back in later this month and next as we get the code out there. I'm looking forward to working with a larger community to further develop this product.