Last September we explained how you should maintain GEMINI 2.3 metadata in ArcGIS. This new post provides more detail on these recommendations, as well as links to various tools and guidance.
The AGI encourages you to maintain GEMINI metadata for both services and datasets. In ArcGIS, services and datasets are linked more closely than many other systems, due to the ease with which you can publish services directly from source data to your ArcGIS portal (ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise). When using ArcGIS Enterprise you can publish either a snapshot of the source data or a reference to it, so the data in the service is automatically updated whenever it changes at source. The same applies to ArcGIS metadata; you can maintain GEMINI 2.3 metadata in a Geodatabase using ArcGIS Pro, and publish it with your services, or you can choose to just maintain the metadata against the services in your ArcGIS portal, since it is through services that most people will actually discover and use your data.
For some organisations, the Geodatabase approach will be right. For others, the service-only approach will make sense. This blog post covers both the Geodatabase and the ArcGIS portal approach.
Maintaining metadata
Firstly, if your metadata is currently in Productivity Suite in GEMINI 2.2 format, you must use this tool within ArcGIS Desktop to migrate existing metadata from Productivity Suite into normal Geodatabase metadata.
Secondly, set your ArcGIS Pro project or ArcGIS portal to use the INSPIRE template for metadata editing. Users who still need to use ArcMap will find that it also has an INSPIRE metadata template.
Thirdly, you will need to use the metadata editor within ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro or your ArcGIS portal to update any existing metadata to ensure it is GEMINI 2.3 compliant. You will also want to modify any business processes or documentation you use to help you capture metadata for the future. To help you do this, we have created this field-by-field guidance, based on the AGI recommendations. We have validated this guidance against the validator (schematron) published by the AGI on their github page, but please let us know if it can be improved.
You may want to load GEMINI metadata into your ArcGIS portal without publishing the item directly from Pro (for example, if you are using ArcMap, or if the item already exists in your portal, or if it is an item such as a Word Document that you would not normally manage in ArcGIS Pro). To do this you will need to use the Save as XML option in ArcGIS Pro (not the Export option), to save your GEMINI metadata to the ArcGIS format, then use the Overwrite option in ArcGIS portal to upload this ArcGIS metadata. For ArcMap users, refer to the Appendix of this blog.
Exporting metadata
To export the metadata from ArcGIS in GEMINI 2.3 format, for example for upload to data.gov.uk, please follow the process below.
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- For Geodatabase metadata using ArcGIS Pro follow the help.
- For Geodatabase metadata using ArcGIS Desktop, follow the help using the transformer ARCGIS2ISO19139gml321
- For service-based metadata using an ArcGIS portal, you need to change the default output format as follows. Instead of using the Download option in the ArcGIS portal metadata editor, click instead View. The URL that opens will look like /info/metadata/metadata.xml?format=default&output=html&token=XXX. Simply remove the “html” so the URL reads &output=&token=XXX. Then save the XML. When using the AGI validator, we found we then needed to then modify the GML link at the top of the file to explicitly specify GML 3.2.1 (where you see http://www.opengis.net/gml at the top of the file, add a / followed by 3.2.1).
We are still working on a batch export method for ArcGIS, for example to allow harvesting by data.gov.uk.
Note that data.gov.uk has been upgraded to expect GEMINI 2.3 metadata, but we understand it is designed to only throw warnings if presented with GEMINI 2.2 data. At the current time the UK Location Editor hasn’t yet been upgraded to GEMINI 2.3, but there is a public beta available with 2.3. For organisations based in Scotland, the Scottish Spatial Data Infrastructure is about to be upgraded to GEMINI 2.3. Organisations in Northern Ireland and Wales should contact their local INSPIRE representative to find out the latest plans.
Finally
Please do continue to keep in touch with us at metadata@esriuk.com and we would like to thank Halil Siddique at City of London Corporation for helping us write this blog post.
Appendix
ArcMap users who would like to export metadata for upload to an ArcGIS portal need to export it in ArcGIS format, not GEMINI format. By default ArcGIS Desktop does not install an ArcGIS to ArcGIS metadata translator. Therefore you need to create this translator by doing the following:
- Create a new file called ArcgisToArcgis.xml in C:\Program Files (x86)\ArcGIS\Desktop10.x\Metadata\Translator
- Edit the contents of the file in notepad, so it looks like the XML below.
- Save the file ArcgisToArcgis.xml. You can then use this as a translator in the Export Metadata Geoprocessing tool. This generates the ArcGIS metadata output file which can be loaded into your ArcGIS portal.
<?xml version="1.0"?> <translator name="ArcGIS Format" xslt="..\Stylesheets\gpTools\exact copy of.xslt" logLevel="all" stopOnErrors="no"> </translator>