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  <title>KNB Software Development Guide: Metacat</title>
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  <td class="tablehead" colspan="2"><p class="label">Metacat Development Guide</p></td>
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  <p>Metacat is a flexible metadata database. It utilizes 
     <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml" target="offline">XML</a> as a 
     common syntax for representing the large number of metadata content
     standards that are relevant to ecology.  Thus, Metacat is a generic XML
     database that allows storage, query, and retrieval of arbitrary XML 
     documents without prior knowledge of the XML schema.  For a user level
     overview of Metacat, please visit the 
     <a href="../user/metacattour.html">Metacat Tour</a> documentation.
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     The Metacat database models XML documents as a DOM tree, basically 
     decomposing the nodes of the XML document and storing the node data
     as a series of records in a relational database via a JDBC connection.
     At this point, only Oracle and PostgreSQL have been tested as a back end databases, 
     but we have avoided RDBMS specific features in order to maintain portability
     to other relational databases.
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  <td>The pages below provide more detailed descriptions of the 
      various development and architecture subjects involved in Metacat.
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      <li> <a href="./metacat-architecture.html">Metacat Architecture </a></li>
      <li> <!-- a href="./metacat-dev-hardware.html" -->Metacat developement hardware requirements <!-- /a --></li>
      <li> <a href="./metacat-eclipse-project.html">Setting up a Metacat Eclipse project </a></li>
      <li> <a href="./building-metacat.html">Building Metacat</a></li>
      <li> <a href="./testing-metacat.html">Testing Metacat</a></li>
      <li> <a href="./troubleshooting.html">Troubleshooting Metacat</a></li>
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<p class="contact">
Web Contact: <a href="mailto:jones@nceas.ucsb.edu">jones@nceas.ucsb.edu</A>
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