Metacat

Sitemaps are XML files that tell search engines—such as Google, which is 

discussed in this section--which URLs on your websites are available for 

crawling. Currently, the only way for a search engine to crawl and index 

Metacat so that individual metadata entries are available via Web searches 

is with a sitemap. Metacat automatically creates sitemaps for all public 

documents in the repository. However, you must register the sitemaps with 

the search engine before it will take effect.

Creating a Sitemap

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

Metacat automatically generates a sitemap file for all public documents in 

the repository on a daily basis. The sitemap file(s) must be available via 

the Web on your server, and must be registered with Google before they take 

effect. For information on the sitemap protocol, please refer to the Google 

page on using the sitemap protocol. You can view Metacat's sitemap files at:: 

  <webapps_dir>/sitemaps

The directory contains one or more XML files named::

  metacat<X>.xml

where ``<X>`` is a number (e.g., 1 or 2) used to increment each sitemap file. 

Because Metacat limits the number of sitemap entries in each sitemap file to 

25,000, the servlet creates an additional sitemap file for each group of 

25,000 entries. 

Verify that your sitemap files are available to the Web by browsing to::

  <your_web_context>/sitemaps/metacat<X>.xml 

  (e.g., your.server.org/knb/sitemaps/metacat1.xml)

Registering a Sitemap

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

Before Google will begin indexing the public files in your Metacat, you must 

register the sitemaps. To register your sitemaps and ensure that they are up 

to date:

1. Register for a Google Webmaster Tools account, and add your Metacat 

   site to the Dashboard.

2. From your Google Webmaster Tools site account, register your sitemaps. 

   See the Google help site for more information about how to register sitemaps. 

   Note: Register the full URL path to your sitemap files, including 

   the http:// (or https://) headers.

Once the sitemaps are registered, Google will begin to index the public 

documents in your Metacat repository. 

NOTE: As you add more publicly accessible data to Metacat, you will need to 

periodically revisit the Google Webmaster Tools utility to refresh your 

sitemap registration.

Metacat keeps an internal log of events (such as insertions, updates, deletes, 

and reads) that can be accessed with the getlog action. Using the getlog action, 

event reports can be output from Metacat in XML format, and/or customized to 

include only certain events: events from a particular IP address, user, event 

type, or that occurred after a specified start date or before an end date. 

The following URL is used to return the basic log—an XML-formatted log of all 

events since the log was initiated::

  http://some.metacat.host/context/metacat?action=getlog 

Note that you must be logged in to Metacat using the HTTP interface or you 

will get an error message. For more information about logging in, please see 

Logging In with the HTTP Interface.

::

  <!-- Example of XML Log -->

  <?xml version="1.0"?>

  <log>

  <logEntry><entryid>44</entryid><ipAddress>34.237.20.142</ipAddress><principal>uid=jones,

  o=NCEAS,dc=ecoinformatics,dc=org</principal><docid>esa.2.1</docid><event>insert</event>

  <dateLogged>2004-09-08 19:08:18.16</dateLogged></logEntry>

  <logEntry><entryid>47</entryid><ipAddress>34.237.20.142</ipAddress><principal>uid=jones,o=NCEAS,

  dc=ecoinformatics,dc=org</principal><docid>esa.3.1</docid><event>insert</event><dateLogged>2004-

  09-14 19:50:40.61</dateLogged></logEntry>

  </log>

The basic log can be quite extensive. To subset the report, restrict the 

matching events using parameters. Query parameters can be combined to further 

restrict the report.

+-----------+-----------------------------------------------------+

| Parameter | Description and Values                              |

+===========+=====================================================+

| ipAddress | Restrict the report to this IP Address (repeatable) |

+-----------+-----------------------------------------------------+

| principal | Restrict the report to this user (repeatable)       |

+-----------+-----------------------------------------------------+

| docid     | Restrict the report to this docid (repeatable)      |

+-----------+-----------------------------------------------------+

| event     | Restrict the report to this event type (repeatable) |

|           | Values: insert, update, delete, read                |

+-----------+-----------------------------------------------------+

| start     | Restrict the report to events after this date       |

|           | Value: YYYY-MM-DD+hh:mm:ss                          |

+-----------+-----------------------------------------------------+

| end       | Restrict the report to events before this date.     |

|           | Value: YYYY-MM-DD+hh:mm:ss                          |

+-----------+-----------------------------------------------------+

To view only the 'read' events, use a URL like::

  http://some.metacat.host/context/metacat?action=getlog&event=read

To view only the events for a particular IP address, use a URL like::

  http://some.metacat.host/context/metacat?action=getlog&ipaddress=107.9.1.31

To view only the events for a given user, use a URL like::

  http://some.metacat.host/context/metacat?action=getlog&principal=uid=johndoe,o=NCEAS,dc=ecoinformatics,dc=org 

To view only the events for a particular document, use a URL like::

  http://some.metacat.host/context/metacat?action=getlog&docid=knb.5.1 

To view only the events after a given date, use a URL like::

  http://some.metacat.host/context/metacat?action=getlog&start=2004-09-15+12:00:00

To view only the events before a given date, use a URL like::

  http://some.metacat.host/context/metacat?action=getlog&end=2004-09-15+12:00:00

To view the 'insert' events for September 2004 (i.e., to combine parameters) use a URL like::

  http://some.metacat.host/context/metacat?action=getlog&event=insert&start=2004-09-01+12:00:00&end=2004-09-30+23:59:59