XML based Virtual Catalogue Module in CoastBase

Abstract

CoastBase is a project that aims to device a system for European marine and coastal management, concerning both the search for and access to a broad range of information sources. In this paper, one central part of the overall system, the virtual catalogue module, will be presented. It facilitates the search through distributed and heterogeneous information sources by implementing an I3 Reference Architecture. In contrast to most other approaches of this type, the XML extreme approach we have chosen allows highest possible modularisation and configuration of the system almost wholly without programming. The XML extreme approach means that XML Schema is used to define the vocabulary, XSL-T is used for the transformations and the querying and visualisation of the results is also XML based. Within this service-oriented architecture, SOAP is used for communication.