Mandatory, Conditional and Optional Elements for Marine Geographic Datasets

Mandatory metadata elements are elements that must appear in any MCP metadata record.

Conditional metadata elements are elements that are mandatory if a certain condition exists. For example, it is mandatory to have a metadata language element if the language encoding is not one of the common ISO10646-1/Unicode character sets such as UTF-8.

Optional metadata elements are elements that don’t need to be present but are recommended to maximize interoperability.

Mandatory Metadata Elements for Marine Geographic Datasets

About the Dataset:

No. Name XPath
D1 Citation Title mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:citation/gmd:CI_Citation/gmd:title
D2 Citation Date mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:citation/gmd:CI_Citation/gmd:date
D3 Abstract mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:abstract
D4 Language mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:language
D5 Topic Category mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:topicCategory
D6 Bounding Box mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:extent/gmd:EX_Extent/gmd:geographicElement/gmd:EX_GeographicBoundingBox
D7 Temporal Extent mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:extent/gmd:EX_Extent/gmd:geographicElement/mcp:EX_TemporalExtent

Rationale for making D7 and D8 mandatory: In earlier versions of the MCP documentation (eg. http://www.aodc.gov.au/files/MarineCommunityProfilev1.4.pdf), D7 and D8 were made conditional on the hierarchyLevel being set to ‘dataset’. However the subject (and the title of this section) in previous documentation has always been about ‘Metadata Elements for Marine Geographic Datasets’. Given that we are referring to ‘datasets’, this condition would appear to be trivially satisfied and we can safely make elements D7 and D8 mandatory.

About the Metadata record:

No. Name XPath
M1 File Identifier mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:fileIdentifier
M2 Standard Name mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:metadataStandardName
M3 Standard Version mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:metadataStandardVersion
M4 Date Stamp mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:dateStamp
M5 Revision Date mcp:MD_Metadata/mcp:revisionDate
M6 Point of Contact mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:contact/gmd:CI_ResponsibleParty

Rationale for making M2 and M3 and Mandatory: The MCP is implemented in both a production version and an experimental version. Implementations need to be able to distinguish between these versions of the MCP.

Conditional Metadata Elements for Marine Geographic Datasets

About the Dataset:

No. Name XPath Condition
CD3 Character Set mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:characterSet Documented if ISO 10646-1/Unicode (eg. UTF-8) not used and not defined by the encoding standard

About the Metadata record:

No. Name XPath Condition
CM1 Character Set mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:characterSet Documented if ISO 10646-1/Unicode (eg. UTF-8) not used and not defined by the encoding standard
CM2 Language mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:language Documented if not defined by the encoding standard

Optional Metadata Elements for Marine Geographic Datasets

All optional elements refer to the dataset.

No. Name XPath
OD1 Responsible Party mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:pointOfContact/gmd:CI_ResponsibleParty
OD2 Spatial Resolution mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:spatialResolution/gmd:MD_Resolution/gmd:equivalentScale
OD3 Distribution Format mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:distributionInfo/gmd:MD_Distribution/gmd:distributionFormat/gmd:MD_Format
OD4 Online Resource mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:distributionInfo/gmd:MD_Distribution/gmd:transferOptions/gmd:MD_DigitalTransferOptions/gmd:onLine/gmd:CI_OnlineResource
OD5 Reference System mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:referenceSystemInfo/gmd:MD_ReferenceSystem
OD6 Spatial Representation Type mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:spatialRepresentationType
OD7 Keywords mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:identificationInfo/mcp:MD_DataIdentification/gmd:keywords
OD8 Lineage mcp:MD_Metadata/gmd:dataQualityInfo/gmd:DQ_DataQuality/gmd:lineage/gmd:LI_Lineage/gmd:statement