GeoNetwork data directory

Date	2012/03/09
Contact(s)	François Prunayre
Last edited
Status	Ongoing
Assigned to release	2.7.0
Resources
Ticket #	#

Overview

The GeoNetwork data directory is the location on the file system where GeoNetwork stores all of its custom configuration. This configuration defines such things as: What thesaurus is used by GeoNetwork? What schema is plugged in GeoNetwork?. The data directory also contains a number of support files used by GeoNetwork for various purposes (eg. Lucene index, spatial index, logos).

It is a good idea to define an external data directory when going to production in order to make upgrade easier.

Proposal Type

• Type: Core Change
• App: GeoNetwork
• Module: Config

Links

• Documents:
• Email discussions:
• Other wiki discussions:

Voting History

• Vote proposed by François Prunayre on 2012/03/XX, result was ...

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Proposal

Creating a new data directory

The data directory needs to be created before starting the catalogue. It must be readable and writable by the user starting the catalogue. If the data directory is an empty folder, the catalogue will initialized the directory default structure. The easiest way to create a new data directory is to copy one that comes with a standards installation.

Setting the data directory

The data directory variable could be set using:

• <webappName>.dir and if not set using:
• geonetwork.dir

Depending on the servlet container used it is also possible to specify the data directory location with a Java System Property.

For Tomcat, configuration is:

CATALINA_OPTS="-Dgeonetwork.dir=/var/lib/geonetwork_data"

Structure of the data directory

• data_directory/
  • codelist: The thesaurus in SKOS format
  • config: Extra configuration (eg. overrides)
    • schemaplugin-uri-catalog.xml
    • JZKitConfig.xml
  • metadata_data: The data related to metadata records
  • index: All indexes used for search
    • nonspatial: Lucene index
    • spatialindex.*: ESRI Shapefile for the index (if not using PostGIS)
  • resources:
    • htmlcache
    • images
      • harvesting
      • logo
      • statTmp
  • removed: Folder with removed metadata.
  • svn_repository: The subversion repository
  • schemaPlugins: The directory used to store new metadata standards

System information

Backwards Compatibility Issues

Main changes of the proposal:

• config.xml appHandler properties for directory are removed
• Schema plugin URI catalogue is divided into 2 files:
  • WEB-INF/schema-uri-catalog.xml which contains URI catalogue for core schemas (ie. those under xml/schemas/*). URI are relative to XSL files (eg. ../xml/schemas/iso19115/present/metadata-iso19115.xsl).
  • <geonetwork.dir>/config/schemaplugin-uri-catalog.xml which contains URI catalogue for plugged schemas. URI are absolute path to XSL files (eg. /var/lib/geonetwork_data/schema_plugins/iso19139.fra/present/metadata-iso19139.fra.xsl).
• z3950.Repositories (JZKitConfig.xml) is build in config directory.
• LogoFilter is renamed to ResourceFilter and provide access to the following filter:
  • images/logos
  • images/harvesting
  • images/statTmp
  • htmlcache
• htmlCacheDir is moved to <geonetwork.dir>/resources/htmlcache and published using the ResourceFilter (like logos)

Risks

Participants

• Francois Prunayre