NapGen Distribution

NapGen is a suite of web applications (Apache on Windows 7 or XP):

1. NAP Generator - generates NAP-conformant XML from database records.
2. NAP File Validator - validates a NAP XML file according to the published NAP schema.

Release Status

This distribution is a pre-alpha release (it does not include all the planned features, only a minute portion of the massive number of NAP elements have been checked, and there had been no field testing). Expect to encounter rough edges and other problems.

Supported Browsers

The supported browsers are:

• Google Chrome (version 17)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 9)
• Mozilla Firefox (version 17)

Supported DBMS

The supported DBMS are:

• Microsoft SQL Server (version 2012)
• Oracle (version 11g)
• PostgreSQL (version 9.1)

Not-Included Features

The following features are not included in this release:

1. Automatically mapping repeatable elements

   This version of NAP Generator supports repeatable NAP elements. But the mapping to each of the repeated instances will have to be manually specified.

   For example, if you map the repeatable element gmd:MD_Metadata/gmd:hierarchyLevel to a one-to-many relationship database table column, NAP Generator will treat it as one-to-one and generate only one instance of that element. To map to an additional instance of gmd:hierarchyLevel, you will have to click on the plus button next to that element and then map the added instance to another column.

2. Importing metadata into GeoNetwork

   This release of NapGen does not support GeoNetwork and therefore cannot import the generated XML into GeoNetwork.

   However this release does support XML file generation, through the Generate XML files button in NAP Generator. That button creates on the Apache server a validated XML file for each of the database records found in a collection's primary table. The files can then be manually imported into GeoNetwork.

3. Automatically updating GeoNetwork for harvesting

   Instead of NapGen monitoring database changes and importing them into a local GeoNetwork (so that they will be picked up in the next round of harvesting by a remote GeoNetwork), you can manually keep track of the database changes and when you want to update the local GeoNetwork:

   1. Invoke NAP Generator to re-generate XML files for all the records in a database collection
   2. Pick out the generated XML files of the changed records
   3. Import them into the local GeoNetwork

Installation Instructions

To install NapGen:

1. Un-zip this distribution's zip file
2. Apply the installation instructions