Registering and submitting your PI data with ease using the ARM Data Product Registration Tool (OME)

 

Authors

Kathy J. Lazar — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Alice T. Cialella — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Giri Prakash — Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Biva Shrestha — Arm Data Archive

Category

ARM Infrastructure

Description

The ARM Climate Research Facility measures, collects and disseminates a large volume of climate related data products to the scientific public. For proper dissemination and usage of ARM data products, metadata written in a universal standard is essential. The ARM Data Product Registration and Submission Tool (OME) facilitates creation of such metadata through a well structured and simple workflow. The tool utilizes the widely accepted FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee) standard for metadata. The OME tool is a custom tool developed using open source software. It is built on the Model View Controller (MVC) software architecture that makes it modular, adaptive and easy to maintain. The ARM Data Product Registration and Submission Tool aids in ARM metadata management and hence ARM data management by automating and simplifying the metadata assignment and review process. The clearest understanding about the product comes directly from its creator. The principal investigators (PIs) submits metadata for their data product more efficiently using this tool. They can draft a metadata record, edit it, and plan to finalize and submit it in a future session at their convenience. They can also retrieve metadata records they created previously as a template to create new metadata submissions. The metadata data managers review the submitted metadata provided by the PIs for completeness and accuracy before approving it, or communicate with the PI for further information. Neither the PIs nor the data managers need to have an understanding of the FDGC metadata standard to use this tool. The PI answers a set of questions related to their data, which is converted to a FDGC standard XML metadata document by the tool. There is no need for additional documentation to be submitted with the dataset. The tool has been used successfully by PIs and data managers for metadata creation, metadata review and data submission to the ARM Climate Research Facility.