Metacat

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#  '$RCSfile$'

#   '$Author: tao $'

# '$Revision: 1334 $'

#     '$Date: 2002-12-10 09:31:20 -0800 (Tue, 10 Dec 2002) $'

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Metacat: XML Metadata Database

------------------------------

Version: 1.2.0 Release

Send feedback and bugs to: metacat-dev@ecoinformatics.org

                           http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org

Contributors: Matt Jones (jones@nceas.ucsb.edu)

              Chad Berkley (berkley@nceas.ucsb.edu)

              Jing Tao (tao@nceas.ucsb.edu)

              Jivka Bojilova (bojilova@nceas.ucsb.edu)

              Dan Higgins (higgins@nceas.ucsb.edu)

Metacat is a flexible database storage system for XML formatted

documents. Metacat models the structure of the XML document, therefore

allowing storage of XML documents with arbitrary schemas. Metacat supports

several databases on the back-end, including Oracle, PostgreSQL and SQL

Server.  The server supports XML document storage, retrievel, query,

validation, and transformation (using the XSLT stylesheet language).

In addition, there is a mechanism for replicating the database

to other metacat instances for backup and load balancing purposes.

Metacat currently uses an LDAP database for authenticating users, but

was written to accomodate other authentication services as well.

Release Notes

Fixes in 1.2.1:

  1) If dataset document has a triple that access document provide

     access control for itself, the xml_access table wouldn't have double

     entries for access document.

  2) Fixed the bug for spatial search when there are letters in latitude or

     longitude nodes.

For 1.2.0:

In 1.2.0 release, the structure of the xml_replication table was changed.

If you try to update a previously installed Metacat, you should run a script

file to updated the table structure before installation.

For Oracle user: At the SQLPLUS prompt type the following -

@src/xmlreplicationtable.sql

For Postgresql user: At install directory prompt type the following -

psql exp < src/xmlreplicationtable_postgres.sql

(where 'exp' is the database name).

If you are a new Metacat user, this step is unneeded.

The build.xml file now has a property named datafilepath. It should be set

to the location of where you want your data files stored. The data directory 

needs to be writeable by whatever user is running tomcat. If you are an

existing user, the data directory is now /<tomcatdir>/webapps/metacat/data

where <tomcatdir> is the your tomcat installation directory where

your webapps directory is located and 'metacat' is the name of your servlet

instance. If you leave your data directory where it currently is, your 

data files are web accessible.  If you do not want your data files to be 

web accessible, move the data directory somewhere outside of your 

webapps directory and change the datafilepath property in the

build.xml file and reinstall metacat.  Note that if you have existing data

files, they need to be moved to the new directory.  For more information 

see bug 478.

-------------

  New features in 1.2.0:

  1) Performance improvements through improved access control handling

  2) New replication features

  3) Added partial SSL support

  4) Additional bugs fixed, see http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org

     474   Metacat in Ecoinfo hang

     475   Associate access doc to some docid which doesn't have ent...

     478   Security hole in Metacat for data file.

     536   Changes to Metacat build script to install stylesheets fr...

     457   Bug in replciation

     466   Create a JUnit class for Metacat action

     502   Security issues in replication

     503   Access control problem to a replicated doucment

     537   SQL error when first insert a new record into xml_replication...

     540   In force replication, some time has reversion number error

     541   Update dataset document which host is not in this metacat...

     542   Duplicate entries in xml_replication table

     543   Metacat hang in there when delta T replication

     554   xml_replication table in production metacat

     479   Debug message level

  New features in 1.1.0:

  1) Added functionality to export a zipped data package. The zip file contains

     all of the data and metadata as well as a rendered html summary of

     the metadata.

  2) Changed version control mechanism.  Metacat can now accept any version of

     a document as long as the given version number is greater than the

     current one.  The new version number does not have to be exactly one

     greater than the current version.

  3) Update xerces.jar file to version 1.4.4

  Fixes in 1.1.0

   1) Fixed ldap authentication bug.  Now, a user from a referred server cannot

      login with an incorrect password.

   2) Changed the default behavior of the access control functionality with

      respect to packaging.

      If a member document in a data package doesn't have an access control list,

      access control rules of the main package document will not apply to the

      member document.  Previously, package members, by default, inherited

      the access control rules of the main package document.

   3) Fixed minor bugs with document access control.

   4) Allowed new version of data files to be uploaded and handled.

   5) Fixed bug where the client could not get the principals or groups from

      the ldap server.

  Fixes in 1.0.3

   1) Fixed problem with Metacat not being able to query for group names when

      and LDAP referral server was down.  Added an LDAP timeout of 5 seconds

      for all referral activity.

   2) Fixed problem where invalid xml characters such as ampersands (&) could

      be inserted into the resultset xml stream.

  Fixes in 1.0.2

   1) Fixed problem with LDAP locking up Metacat when a referral server

      was not available.

  Fixes in 1.0.1

   1) Fixed problem with authenticating using LDAP referrals

   2) Fixed bug that prevent groups from being used in access documents

Installation

------------

See the file "docs/user/metacatinstall.html" for detailed instructions.

Documentation

-------------

See the docs directory for detailed documentation and installation

instructions.

Details of the Metacat architecture can be found on the website for

the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB):

  http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/metacat/

Contributions to this work are welcome.  Please see the above web site

for details on how to contribute.

Major Known Bugs or Feature Requests (see http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you discover a bug

please report it, either by email (above) or by using our bug tracking

system (http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org). There is a list of currently

unimplemented features in Bugzilla that we are working on for the next

release (no, we don't have a date yet!).

Legalese

--------

This software is copyrighted by The Regents of the University of California

and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis

and licensed under the GNU GPL; see the 'LICENSE' file for

details.

This material is based upon work supported by the

National Science Foundation under Grant No. DEB99-80154 and DBI99-04777.

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this

material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect

the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

This product includes software developed by the Apache Software

Foundation (http://www.apache.org/). See the LICENSE file in lib/apache

for details.

The source code, object code, and documentation in the com.oreilly.servlet

package is copyright and owned by Jason Hunter. See the cos-license.html file

for details of the license.  Licensor retains title to and ownership of the

Software and all enhancements, modifications, and updates to the Software.