View source for Talk:2010-03-19: Demystifying the GEOSS Infrastructure - Virtual Workshop 2

== What's the difference between the GEOSS Clearinghouse and GEOSS Registries? -- Steve Ludewig, 18 March 2010 (EDT) ==

The GEOSS Component and Service Registry provides the key “yellow pages” feature of GEOSS, allowing GEO Members and Participating Organizations to identify and describe GEOSS Components and
Services associated with them.

The GEOSS Clearinghouse provides search across all component and service descriptions that are in the Component and Service Registry. A small set of searchable fields is extracted from the descriptions and are made available through a standard query interface to support rapid and consistent search across multiple community catalogues. Registered catalog services are, in turn, queried and their contents are either harvested on a recurrent basis or are searched in parallel. Applications may also query the Clearinghouse to discover and access services through links stored in the service descriptions (metadata).

== How many GEOSS clearinghouses are there?  -- [[User:Erinmr|Erinmr]] 09:48, 18 March 2010 (EDT) ==

There are three clearinghouses: 
* FGDC Clearinghouse
* ESRI Clearinghouse
* Compusult Clearinghouse

===Re: How many GEOSS clearinghouses are there?  -- [[User:Erinmr|Erinmr]] 09:51, 18 March 2010 (EDT)===
ESRI and Compusult also have GEO Portals:
* ESRI Geoportal: http://geoss.esri.com/geoportal/catalog/main/home.page
* Compusult: http://www.geowebportal.org/web/guest/home

FGDC only has a clearinghouse.