ADIwg Overview and Goals

The “Alaska Data Integration Working Group” (ADIwg) was formed to examine and address the technical barriers to efficiently integrate and share data within and among participating organizations.

The ADIwg evolved from, and supports the common interests of, the North Slope Science Initiative Oversight Group (NSSI), Alaska Ocean Observing System Board (AOOS), the Arctic Research Mapping Application (ARMAP) North Pacific Research Board (NPRB), the Alaska Climate Change Executive Roundtable (ACCER), and their member agencies.

From the outset, ADIwg divided its broad mission into three phases: 1) manage and exchange ‘project’ metadata; 2) manage and exchange ‘data’ metadata; and 3) exchange data.

Phase 1 is nearing completion. The objective is to make exploring and coordinating project metadata across all participating organizations seamless through the adoption of an interagency standard and protocol. This implementation will be followed by initiatives to exchange data metadata and eventually data.

Group Structure and Approach

The ADIwg formed two subgroups: a policy group and a technical group. The policy group is comprised of agency leads to help facilitate implementation within their agency and to ensure the technical approach fulfills agency needs. The technical group is made up of specialists with hands-on experience working with data and systems.

Progress to Date

In November 2009, the technical group produced a white paper on the status of Alaska wide Project tracking Systems (PTS). Since then, the technical group has met monthly to implement a project metadata solution.

The working group then worked to arrive at a set of cooperatively developed standards for the exchange of project metadata. These design standards define both the data and operational considerations necessary for successful exchange. The operational considerations recommend that each organization maintain at least the minimal project metadata standard core fields set by the ADIwg. The service oriented approach (SOA) assigns a single point of responsibility for the integrity of each metadata record and ensures only current records are served.

Numerous steps were required to complete the body of standards for data collection, maintenance, and distribution. The completed steps are listed below:

  • The core project metadata fields were identified, defined, and their optionality specified
  • A data model was constructed to document the data relationships and physical data structure of the metadata database
  • A metadata transmission schema was defined based on the current FGDC standard and reviewed with FGDC
  • A prototype database was built in MS Access for as a test of the data model
  • Two test web services were created to prove web delivery of metadata in multiple environments (one in Linux and another in Windows)

Through the summer of 2011, ADIwg will resolve the final remaining technical issues, publish our implementation documentation, and prepare to initiate Phase 2 in the fall.   As commissioned, ADIwg is providing recommendations to the participating NSSI, AOOS, NPRB, and ACCER member organizations.  These include methods to implement web services in order to deliver project metadata that is formatted in the co-authored ADIwg project metadata standard.  A report summarizes the ADIwg’s Phase 1 findings.

Contributing Organizations

Active entities in the Data Integration Working Group during 2009 and 2010 include:

Documents and Links

ADIwg White Papers

Other Background

Project Metadata Documentation

Project Tracking System and Web Services

last updated: 4/27/12

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