Abstract
Metadata Catalog (Metacat) is a tool that has been adapted independently by EAP-ILTER
member networks since 2004. Metacat is a repository for data and metadata, which helps scientist
find, understand and effectively use such data sets. The research data sets are currently documented
in these Metacats in a standardized way and provide the scientific community these data within
each individual network. The Metacat framework enables efficient network-based discovery and
access to such data. Although the current Metacat servers are installed individually by member networks
of EAP-ILTER, they can be connected to be a data confederation system through web services.
We proposed a Metacat federation framework to connect EAP-ILTER regional data-sharing
using two web services technologies, SOAP and REST. We tested this framework using Metacat
servers of KNB, TERN, JaLTER and FRIM. The results indicates that this framework not only allows
EAP-ILTER member networks that have a Metacat server to readily join the services with
their current infrastructure but also can share the data of other regions. In addition, a multilingual
controlled vocabulary translating engine provides the possible usage of retrieving metadata documents
stored with different local languages in the future.