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Algenta Technologies

US Long Term Ecological Research Network

Algenta Technologies

LSID authority - University of Wisconsin CFL

The first public LSID resolution server. This LSID authority is made possible through a strategic partnership between the North Temperate Lakes LTER and Algenta Technologies.

What is the CFL LSID authority?

This server creates a semantic web of data and metadata information drawn from the NTL-LTER datasets, delivered in an RDF format. Each piece of data or metadata is referenced by a globally unique LSID URN. These identifiers are then be referenced by the metadata of other LSIDs, creating relationships between diverse datasets regardless of content management schemas. This allows for a simple integration path among various researchers and institutions to attain wide-area interoperability with multiple, distributed data systems while maintaining their current infrastructure. The LSIDs are resolved through a web-service interface running on this machine. This LSID authority complies to the latest LSID Standard as submitted to the OMG.

What is a LSID?

The LSID protocol is a standard from the OMG. A LSID defines a specific version of data or a piece of metadata, and conforms to the URN standard. It contains a authority, namespace, a unique object in the namespace, and an optional version id. Here is an example LSID from the CFL LSID authority. urn:lsid:limnology.wisc.edu:category:phys

How do I use the CFL LSID authority?

You can use any RDF and LSID enabled application to browse this authority's metadata and download datasets.

Recommended Windows Client: LSID Launchpad - Screen shot

This program integrates into Internet Explorer and allows you to view LSIDs as easily as clicking on a hyperlink and viewing a web page. You may download it from IBM developerworks here.

Notice: You must install or upgrade to LSID Launchpad for Windows, Release 3.2.2.0 or greater in order to use this LSID authority after Feb. 2004. You should also restart your computer after this installation to ensure that the included COM LSID revolver is registered.

Entry Points

Here are some example LSIDs that will take you into our RDF metadata web. To view these you must have installed the LSID Launchpad application.

Interesting LSIDs Top Level Project Entries

Technology behind the CFL LSID authority

  • Algenta Technologies NTL-LTER Authority Service
    • Oracle Connection Pooling
      Connection Pooling is needed on this LSID server due to the rapid succession of requests delivered by the LSID Launchpad and other clients.
    • Custom JDBC wrappers
      The Datasets at NTL-LTER are very large. To deliver them from the database to the client requires using streaming of the files created from the database records. Custom java InputStreams were written to allow for very large dataset streams in comma separated, excel, and xml
    • Build on IBM's Open Source j2ee LSID authority container
      More information on the LSID host container can be found here.
  • Tomcat 4
  • Oracle
  • Solaris

External LSID Links

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