Metadata Not So Frequently Asked Questions

Q. When should the geometry_type_lookup be set to linestring and when should it be set to multipoint?

A. Unless there is a cruise track associated with the data, and *not* a cruise track arbitrarily *made up* for the data, use multipoint.  Sometimes a station dataset contains sufficient positions to constitue a cruise track.  In such cases, it is preferable to set the geometry_type_lookup to be linestring.

 Q. Can a slash ("/") be used in a cruiseid (aka deployment)?

A. No.  It will cause the MapServer to fail, probably because the slash is misinterpretted as part of a directory path in a JGOFS/GLOBEC "path".

 Q. Do dataset names as used by BCO-DMO in the metadata database have to be the same names as used in the JGOFS/GLOBEC .objects or .remoteobjects files?

A. The dataset names as listed in the database and displayed by OSPREY/BCO-DMO do not have to be as cryptic or as short as those used in the .remoteobjects file and displayed by dir.  It would be better to use easier to understand dataset names, and as far as is known, all characters can be used.  MapServer, while it does use the longer, less restrictive names from the database when one clicks on the Show Data button, when you click on the dataset name and actually go to the data object it uses the
URL stored in the database which does use the correct .objects entry.   While it could be somewhat confusing to people that the name shown in the "info" page is that from the .objects file, there should be an obvious correlation between the data object name, database name and the dataset description as displayed in the info page.