Eco Grid Web Design Notes

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EcoGrid Search Webapp

Overview

Web application for searching the EcoGrid. User Actions:

enter select one of more nodes to search.
enter search criteria
receive results
view item details

System Actions

receive search request
for each node to be searched convert generic EcoGridQuery into namespace specific query (EML, darwin)

is the XML format the same with just attributes for fields names different?

Execute queries against each node

too bad multithreading in J2EE (servlets, etc) isn't allowed

Merge search results into one set
transform XML to HTML and send to client

The search should be able to search multiple nodes at once and present the results in a single set. The search should be able to search more than one format (EML, Darwin) transparently (to the user). Search results should support multiple styles (skins). Possibly have a basic and advanced query inputs, where basic is a single step/screen with one or a few fields and advanced is multiple steps or sets of fields. The search funtionality will be similar to Morpho with the significant difference of handling multiple nodes and formats. The EcoGrid Webapp will utilize existing web services (or grid services), which can handle single nodes and a single format.

User Interface

UI will be web browser based. Search criteria will be collected across multiple screens (wizard) with the option to execute search or move to next screen on each screen.

UI Input Screen 1 : Sources and Keywords

Sources: select one or more options of registered ecogrid hosts.
keywords: full text search (how?)
title:
name: (one input field and parse or use two seperate fields?)
key|value pairs

input some additional key|value pairs, key possible chose from list box of common fields
possible move this to a advanced keyword page where users can also specify more complex AND/OR combinations

<Search Now> or <Next: More Criteria (2 Spatial, 3 Temporal)

UI Input Screen 2 : Spatial

Area: list - "select area", "custom", and list of predefined areas

custom will use a graphical picker or manul input

(inputs for custom) N,S,E,W (min|max lat|long)
<Search Now> or <Next: More Criteria (3 Temporal)

UI Input Screen 3 : Temporal

date type : assuming there is more than date field such as collection date, publication date, etc
startDate
endDate
<Search Now>

UI Results Screen

...

Application Components

UI

Web tier using Struts handles collecting user input, dispatches query to GenericQueryHub and displays results. This only knows about generic queries which use simple field names instead of xpaths which could vary according to data format (EML, Darwin, etc.).

GenericQueryHub

Receives a generic query from the webapp. Then for each data source selected to search, it converts the query into an ecogrid query for the appropriate data format using some xref to obtain xpaths for the simple field names. It submits and recieves results for each data source and merges them together returning a single dataset.

Related Questions

GWSDL

I was hoping to use familiar WSDL tools with GWSDL, but this isn't possible. So what does one use for working with GWSDL? Specifically, client generation? E.g., with WSDL you can point your IDE to a URL for the WSDL on the server hosting the web service and it will generate the client code as well as let you run simple generic tests with generating a client.

Data Formats - EML, Darwin

What all data formats are there?

I have only see EML, Darwin, is there others?
EML
Darwin described where?
What fields can be assumed to be common among all data formats?

(need to create xref of the different paths for these)

Ecogrid

is there I build target that I haven't found for building just the client code?
if not, what's the minimal set of things I need from the Ecogrid project for clients?
is EcogridQueryLevelOne, the only grid service that I'll be dealing with?
How do you a full-text (keyword) query with ecogrid?
What about queries for counts, group by, etc

Attachments:

LTER_query_interface_mockup.png		50415 bytes
ecogrid_query_screen.PNG		1902 bytes
ecogrid_query_screen.png		51006 bytes

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This particular version was published on 19-Aug-2004 15:01:39 PDT by LTER.stekell.