Micka – Catalogue and Metadata solution

Micka tool is a set of libraries and a web application for management and discovery of geospatial (meta)data, including RDF- and JSON- based semantics. The full documentation is stored at https://github.com/hsrs-cz/Micka. Micka provides back-end as well as front-end modular, scalable and customizable solutions.

The main goal of the Micka tool is to connect all the relevant kinds of resources (datasets, web services, sensor measurements, models, maps, other kinds of visualizations etc.) to provide answers, for instance, to the following questions:

  • show me all data and (map) visualizations that were developed according to a certain legislation or
  • show me what has been done with the certain sensor measurements (derived datasets, policies, link to e-shop selling the raw sensor measurements,…).

As such, the Micka acts as a primary tool for discovery of various kinds of resources. A general strategy of Micka software design may be identified as follows:

  1. A user would like to discover relevant information regarding his/her area of interest, theme and other preferences. A user e.g. searches for all kinds of available information related to European Noise Directive in the area on the border of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria.
  2. On contrary to Web searching engines, the Micka tool enables to define advanced (multiple) searching criteria, such as to draw a rectangle in a map to define the area that I am interested in, to define quality of information I am interested in (such as spatial accuracy higher than one meter) or to define the responsible authority. E.g. I would like to obtain only noise measurements from official mapping authorities since 2014.
  3. A user than obtains relevant (meta)information on all the available resources he/she was searching for. He/she may look into details as well as see all the related resources that provides links to other applications. E.g. a user discovers a NoiseDataset that fulfils all his/her criteria and would like to see a preview of such dataset on a map, see the legal act under which the dataset was created, have a link for the sensor measurement that was conducted in order to populate the NoiseDataset or use a link to the e-shop to buy the dataset.
  4. From a producer’s perspective, a producer may import his/her metadata from another system or create them manually.
  5. A producer than decides which metadata will be published, i.e. made available over the internet.

The following APIs are supported for the http://policyvisuals.eu:

  • (Open)Micka GUI A user interface for (Open)MicKA.
  • OGC CSW API An interface for a communication to other CSW servers and/or clients. The interface follows the full implementation of the OGC CSW 2.0.2 implementation specification including the ISO Application Profile 1.0.
  • OGC WMS API An interface defined according to the OGC WMS 1.0.0 – 1.3.0 implementation specifications (including INSPIRE modifications) in order to automatically create metadata from a WMS instance.
  • OGC WFS API An interface defined according to the OGC WFS 1.0.0 – 2.0.0 implementation specifications (including INSPIRE modifications) in order to automatically create metadata from a WFS instance.
  • INSPIRE ATOM API An object oriented interface for a communication according to the ATOM Syndication format, in a version as defined in the INSPIRE Technical Guidelines for Download services.
  • GEMET RDF API An interface designed and developed for a communication to the GEMET thesaurus. The implementation follows guidelines for GEMET API as described under the URL: http://www.eionet.europa.eu/gemet/en/webservices/.
  • JSON(LD) OpenSearch API An interface designed and developed to publish of search results in a format suitable for syndication and aggregation.

From the technical point of view, (Open)Micka could be integrated to any platform and/or system through Web services as far as the following requirements are met:

  • any web server with mod_rewrite enabled,
  • PHP 5.6.x with XSL extension,
  • PostgreSQL >= 9.2,
  • Composer (https://getcomposer.org/) – for installation some components.

The Micka tool is being offered in two licensing versions. OpenMicka is freely available while Micka is a commercial tool. Customization and deployment are paid in both cases.

Leave a Review.

You must be logged in to post a comment.