con terra GmbH, specialist in the development and operation of spatial data infrastructures, and the 52°North Initiative for Geospatial Open Source Software GmbH establish a new 52°North Open Source Project on metadata management, based on con terra`s smartEditor software.
Metadata is an essential means for providing access to spatial data and spatial information services. Accordingly, metadata is one of the main building blocks of INSPIRE, the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe. con terra’s smartEditor is a powerful component of the sdi.suite terraCatalog for collecting and editing metadata, incorporating an extensive range of INSPIRE functions. It is widely used at all administrative levels from local authorities to state level departments. As such it feeds metadata catalogues all across Europe.
Time, however, does not stand still and both requirements and technologies evolve continuously. With this in mind, con terra has decided to adopt the 52°North community process to evaluate new techniques which appear on the horizon and to jointly embrace the development of advanced methods and tools for metadata management.
As a first contribution, con terra has migrated its software product smartEditor to this new 52°North open source project. The software is now available under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license (http://52north.org/communities/metadata-management-community/) and can be easily integrated in the Esri Geoportal Server. The smartEditor will continue to be an integral part of the sdi.suite, shipped with the sdi.suite terraCatalog and complimented with a full package of support and maintenance services.
