Discovery Testbed Work Plan

Vision

(Pain point: knowing which services were available for which data. What should be in place to address this pain point? There are other avenues for addressing this pain point - e.g., Tools Match work in the semantic cluster. Opps for synergy/collaboration in solutions.)

The initial vision of the Discovery Testbed is to support the following items:

Setup validation for registration of ESIP services - Start with focus on OpenSearch & Data Casting; may add other services later (Brian's sciflo services, provenance as a service). Focus on services we (ESIP) already have.
- xsd or Schematron validation. E.g., Does the response conform to an agreed-upon DCP?
- error handling - should a discovery testbed also test the error handling? Leverage JMeter for some of this? Outside scope for now.
Provide some form of a service cast of registered services
Encourage the ESIP Community to actively contribute
Chaining together of data and services - e.g., exploring data and services mapping, brokering∗

∗It is noted that the ability to chain services together may be a future work goal, and is not of immediate high priority to this first testbed work plan.

Assumptions

Solution will be based on the Esri Geoportal Server software, an open source product managed by the Esri SDI Solutions team.
Development work will be done by the Esri SDI Solutions team as part of the development to the Esri Geoportal Server product. All development work that results from this project can be included in subsequent releases of the Esri Geoportal Server.
Compliance should be done for services. Clients will validate their own compliance.
- on registration, checks for compliance. if yes, then gets registered.
To improve impact to Cluster, want others (other than Esri) in Clusters to contribute to testbed.

Hosting environment

The hosting environment for the solution will be identified by the ESIP Discovery Cluster Testbed Configuration Board, and will meet the system requirements as defined by the Esri Geoportal Server Preinstallation documentation.
The ESIP Products and Services Committee, ESIP Discovery Cluster, or an ESIP Discovery Cluster member organization will host the testbed instance.

Use Cases

Please feel free to contribute use cases, or add to the existing ones. See Use case template for the template.

Leverage existing use-case implementations of clients using Discovery
- Service validation
- Query aggregated data and services

Use cases that apply, but are already implemented with out-of-the-box Esri Geoportal Server (i.e., minimal development necessary)

Some more use cases, sorry I haven't done the whole Use case template thing; will have to fill in if we want to pursue these. --steve.richard 2011-01-30
- Enable configuration for ATOM response encoding
- Enable configuration for csw:record encoding
- Enable capability to respond in other XML schema besides that in which the record was imported. Option 1-- add capability to pass response xml through xslt in output pipe line. Alternatively extend the machinery that does the ATOM and csw:record encoding configuration to allow configuring other output formats using the mapping between meanings and x-paths in various input formats

Requirements

Requirements for customizations to the Esri Geoportal Server will be identified by the ESIP Discovery Cluster and reviewed with the Esri SDI Solutions team.
Requirements will be based upon the description of the work as described in Task 2 of the Testbed RFP.
Requirements that are identified as out-of-scope for this project can be addressed in future work by Esri and /or the ESIP Discovery Cluster.
Should focus on server-compliance first.
See complete set of Discovery Testbed Requirements

Schedule and Milestones

Definition of use cases and requirements for customized geoportal. The first to be addressed is the Service Validation use case.
Iterative development: As development proceeds, versions of the customizations to a Geoportal Server instance will be deployed on the ESIP test instance. After these deployments, ESIP members can access them and provide feedback.
Action on Feedback – bugs fixed, enhancements logged for inclusion or future consideration, further use cases documented, and how-to’s authored.
Progress Report at ESIP Summer 2012 Meeting. There will be a 25-minute hands-on at the Discovery Cluster session. Depending on the project progress at that point, the time can be used for presenting the tool to the cluster members present, hands-on working with the tools, how-to for developing the validation configurations to support future specifications, and/or other important topics where face-to-face is important.
Tech Transfer to ESIP Discovery Cluster on how to use customized geoportal.
Population of geoportal with data/services by ESIP Discovery Cluster.

Workforce & Contributing

We need your help in filling the following roles:

Contributors: Please send us URLs to the service(s) and/or cast(s) that we can use to test the validation. Note that no service or cast will be harmed in this testing :)
Developers: We have developers from Esri, but some of you expressed interest also in developing. If that’s you, we’d like to get your insight on the process for contributing code and deploying updates see Discovery Testbed Code Contribution Guidelines.
Testers: Folks willing to be trained on the customizations, access the deployment, and provide feedback.
Documenters: Folks willing to enter these into a wiki and/or the source code repository.

Additionally, there are some specific roles that someone(s) in the cluster should fill:

Technical staff to assist Esri staff with the deployment of the Geoportal Server software.
Staff to administer the implemented geoportal instance from a systems perspective.
Discovery Cluster Geoportal Administrator(s) that will approve published resources on the Geoportal and make decisions if content is appropriate.