Overview of BCO-DMO Software System

The BCO-DMO software system is composed of two main components: Access, update and insert of metadata information and access to the actual data managed by BCO-DMO.

See the BCO-DMO Data Management Architectural Overview for a diagram of the system.

Access, update and insert of metadata information is managed within a MySQL database by Drupal, a content management system. Public access to the metadata does not require any username or password. Metadata insertions and updates do require a login as a BCO-DMO data manager.

Access to the actual data managed by BCO-DMO is enabled by the JGOFS-GLOBEC data management system.

We have two public/private facing "servers":

1. www.bco-dmo.org is the BCO-DMO web site server providing content in support of BCO-DMO's goals. The "public" sees most of the web page content, but some content is restricted to only those who log in as "Data Managers". (For example, people's email address and telephone numbers are not displayed on the publicly accessible "People" pages. You must be logged in as a Data Manager to see this information.)  Data Managers can insert, update, and delete metadata content. Content is managed by the Drupal content management system.

2. mapservice.bco-dmo.org is the site for the MapServer geospatial application. It is supported by the metadata information accessed via a Perl subroutine library.