Proposal number : Proposal title: Hidden Elements

Date	2008/06/20
Contact(s)	Simon Pigot, Stefano Giaccio
Last edited	Timestamp
Status	draft
Assigned to release	2.3
Resources	Available

Overview

Apply permissions to metadata elements (not just records).

Stage 1 – elements are not group related – apply to internet/public/intranet groups only
Stage 2 – add additional granularity via interface (component 2)

Proposal Type

• Type: GUI Change, Core Change, Module Change
• App: GeoNetwork
• Module: Data Manager

Links

• Email discussions: John Hockaday, Geoscience Australia suggested this on geonetwork-devel

Voting History

• None as yet

---

Motivations

Move access/permissions control down to element level.

Proposal

5 components to deal with:

1. Template editor: additional controls for selecting elements that are to be hidden. Selected elements written to database on save/save and close.
2. Need an additional permissions interface to associate groups with XPaths (stage 2 – more sophisticated users)
3. Database changes: additional dependent table on OperationAllowed – OperationAllowedElements – schema: MetadataId, Xpath – related to OperationAllowed by MetadataId and GroupId
4. Query table and retrieve XPaths based on GroupId of UserSession, apply XPaths to JDOM tree before record returned from service – add ISO attribute (gco:nilReason=”withheld”) for ISO records only – track down all locations where this can happen – could be possible to apply this in DataManager getMetadata
5. Lucene index – concealed elements cannot be indexed because the index can be searched by anyone – the permissions systems is not applied until the record is displayed. The interesting outcome of leaving concealed info in the index is that a user could search and get a result on the concealed info but would not be able to see it when the record was displayed.

Backwards Compatibility Issues

Previous installations (2.2 and earlier) will need to migrate to a new database if they want to use this – the implementation could be made to tolerate the missing table if necessary.

Harvesting from versions < 2.2 – filter is applied to conceal elements regardless of group.

Risks

Participants

• As above