Metacat is a flexible metadata database. It utilizes XML as a common syntax for representing the large number of metadata content standards that are relevant to ecology. Thus, Metacat is a generic XML database that allows storage, query, and retrieval of arbitrary XML documents without prior knowledge of the XML schema. For a user level overview of Metacat, please visit the Metacat Tour documentation.

The Metacat database models XML documents as a DOM tree, basically decomposing the nodes of the XML document and storing the node data as a series of records in a relational database via a JDBC connection. At this point, only Oracle and PostgreSQL have been tested as a back end databases, but we have avoided RDBMS specific features in order to maintain portability to other relational databases.

• Metacat Architecture
• Metacat developement hardware requirements
• Setting up a Metacat Eclipse project
• Building Metacat
• Testing Metacat