Title:	EXTRACTING AND EXPOSING RELATIONAL DATABASE METADATA ON THE WEB
Author(s):	João Carlos da Silva, Elisabete Tomomi Kowata, Auri Marcelo Rizzo Vincenzi
ISBN:	978-989-8533-09-8
Editors:	Bebo White and Pedro Isaías
Year:	2012
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Interoperability. Metadata. OAI-PMH. Relational Database.
Type:	Full Paper
First Page:	35
Last Page:	42
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	Information about a particular subject can be stored in different repositories such as databases, digital libraries, spreadsheets, text files, web pages etc. In this context of heterogeneous data sources, to query, possibly in natural language, to integrate information and to promote interoperability are tasks that depend, among other factors, on the user’s prior knowledge regarding location, owner, content description of each information source etc. These metadata, referenced in this text as source description metadata (SDM), are not generally stored in a catalogue of the database management system. In a shared information environment it is crucial to provide access to metadata that describes a data source, regardlessly of the way in which it is stored. This paper discusses the representation and retrieval of metadata from relational databases and how the information represented by the metadata can be made available. A proposal for extracting and exposing metadata from relational databases is presented, aiming at the interoperability between these repositories and other information sources. For this purpose, metadata are extracted and described in the Dublin Core standard and exposed through the OAI-PMH protocol. This protocol is already adopted in digital libraries and several studies on the subject have been carried out. No studies have been found regarding SDM extraction from relational databases to provide interoperability with other repositories; this acted as motivation for developing a proposal to implement this activity. The proposal is presented in three steps: description of database contents through the Dublin Core standard, extraction of metadata describing database contents and use of OAI-PMH protocol for exposing the extracted metadata. A prototype tool named Metadatabase Extractor was implemented and assessed against a set of databases showing the feasibility of the proposal and its automation.
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