The NDG b-schema is the heart of how we plan to support data browsing (as opposed to searching).

The key concept is that we have a simple relationship between observation stations (ObsStn), Data Production Tools (DPT), and Activities, which are linked together by Deployments as depicted below:

Image: IMAGE: static/bSchema1.jpg

Examples of how it could work would be

  • Instrumental:
    • describe a bunch of tools with SensorML.
    • describe a bunch of places where it could be deployed with the ObsStn schema (we’ll have to role our own)
    • describe the activities with free text
    • link them together in a deployment, which includes:
      • start date, end date
      • activityID, ObsStnID, DPT ID
      • any deploymen specific settings (e.g. calibration coefficients as actually used) … we’d have to make sure that the DPT schema supported this because the attributes of the deployment should only be selectable from schemas defined at the higher level.
  • Simulation
    • describe the model capabilities with the EarleySuite
    • describe a bunch of computational environments with ObsStn (ok, we need to change the name of this thing)
    • describe the activities
    • link them together as above except the deployment specific settings would be from the schema of possible model settings implicit in the Earley Suite.