New Task: Federated ERDDAP for MBON data available on RA ERDDAP's

[MathewBiddle]

Who is requesting this?

U.S. MBON project community

What is being requested?

The U.S. MBON community continues to ask about a consolidated "database" or "catalog" which contains the data from MBON projects, including locations and observing method, to foster better collaboration across projects. Since hosting the raw'ish data on an RA ERDDAP is part of the data flow, it would be beneficial to stand up a federated ERDDAP which points to the various datasets that are already available on RA ERDDAPS. This would provide one succinct location to find most of the MBON project data.

There is a tool, EDDTableFromErddap, which handles tabular data from a remote ERDDAP™ server.

The ask:

• Identify where the ERDDAP could live (cloud? Axiom server?)
  • Can other ML staff have access to system?
• Identify a url structure and host url address.
• Stand up a lightweight ERDDAP server, using https://github.com/ioos/erddap-gold-standard/. Follow the specifications documented at https://erddap.github.io/setupDatasetsXml.html#EDDTableFromErddap to ensure the ERDDAP has the capability to read from other ERDDAPs.
• Identify a process for listing the datasets to be added to the federated ERDDAP. This should include a mechanism for updating with new ids. Could be a simple json file on GitHub somewhere.
• Using the dataset listing above, create a process to generate datasets.xml.
• Flag all datasets for reloading.

What is the requested deadline and why?

2025-01-01

What is the current status quo (i.e., what happens if this does not get done)?

• Continued lack of a "clearing house" for "MBON" data.

What indicates this is done (i.e., how do we know this is complete)?

• federated ERDDAP is running.

Provide a description or any other important information.

We can test with this one first http://www.neracoos.org/erddap/tabledap/WBTS_CFIN_2004_2017.html

The skeleton XML for an EDDTableFromErddap dataset:

<dataset type="EDDTableFromErddap" datasetID="..." active="..." >
  <sourceUrl>...</sourceUrl>
  <accessibleTo>...</accessibleTo> <!-- 0 or 1 -->
  <graphsAccessibleTo>auto|public</graphsAccessibleTo> <!-- 0 or 1 -->
  <reloadEveryNMinutes>...</reloadEveryNMinutes> <!-- 0 or 1 -->
  <defaultDataQuery>...</defaultDataQuery> <!-- 0 or 1 -->
  <defaultGraphQuery>...</defaultGraphQuery> <!-- 0 or 1 -->
  <addVariablesWhere>...</addVariablesWhere> <!-- 0 or 1 -->
  <fgdcFile>...</fgdcFile> <!-- 0 or 1 -->
  <iso19115File>...</iso19115File> <!-- 0 or 1 -->
  <onChange>...</onChange> <!-- 0 or more -->
  <redirect>true(default)|false</redirect> <!-- 0 or 1; -->
</dataset>

[MathewBiddle]

The problem we will run into is, what about the projects that don't use an RA ERDDAP as their initial data sharing tool? Eg. ones shared via DataOne or EDI or metacat?

Can/should we bring those in?