The Complete Metadata Solution

The Meta Manager software suite allows you to easily enter into the world of information marketing, selection, presentation and delivery using existing and creating new data dictionary definitions. Meta Manager supplies the linkages that enable your organization to cost-effectively enter into the next generation of Internet searching and discovery tools that are based on the Z39.50 search and retrieval protocol.

Meta Manager provides a complete solution for creating and defining new and/or mapping existing geospatial metadata definitions and geospatial datasets according to metadata standards such as the U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee's (FGDC) Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata and the Global Information Locator System (GILS) profile. Both of these profiles are based on ANSI/NISO Z39.50, the American National Standard for Information Retrieval Application Service.

For an additional detailed description of metadata, Meta Manager and its capabilities, download the Meta Manager White Paper, in pdf format. New   We now have a new white paper, "Enabling Z39.50 Services for Relational Databases" available in pdf format.

The ANSI Z39.50-1992 standard is being widely used within the library community for catalog and document search and retrieval. The Z39.50 standard provides for the use of common attribute sets whose use and operations are well-known to both client and server. The latest version of the standard also allows a server to "explain" its searchable attributes and operators to a client to permit an intelligent query of non-common attributes.

The GEO and GILS profiles have been defined to incorporate data elements including bounding coordinate and footprint fields.

Meta Manager provides for the search and retrieval of geospatial metadata entries and related geospatial data sets accessible by GEO-compliant clients in the Internet environment. This includes local applications of isolated TCP/IP networks, local area networks based on the Ethernet protocol, and wide-area networks using a consistent host addressing scheme.

In the Internet environment, the Server component of the software suite acts primarily as a direct access point to information stored within relational metadata databases. These databases can then be accessed through a GEO or GILS-compliant client without changing the internal dictionaries and definitions of the target database.