Geodata Discovery Service

The following represents the many capabilities of the Z39.50 GEO profile.

• Extensions: The GEO profile is built on top of the Z39.50 profile called BIB-1. Some of the Z39.50 profiles such as the Z39.50 GEO Profile build on the core BIB-1 by using a subset of it and by defining extensions.
  
  
• International use: The Z39.50 GEO Profile search protocol is widely adopted by agencies around the world. Other spatial data infrastructures that use this protocol are able to directly connect to any Z39.50 search server, or as peer clients to the distributed search server.
  
  
• Registered profile: The Z39.50 GEO Profile is a registered profile of the Z39.50-1992 standard to incorporate the FGDC's Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (June/94 issue).
  
  
• Implementation: Assuming that you already have some sort of searchable database or product inventory, then creating an FGDC/GEO search connection should take about three to ten days of effort to complete.
  
  
• No need for WWW server: The Z39.50 GEO Profile Search Protocol is a TCP/IP socket-based protocol, and as such does not require a web server to be installed at your site. Since the computers connecting to your search server connect directly to a port on your search server, no web server is needed in between. In some cases, however, this may conflict with an organization’s security and firewall policies. The new “stateless” version of the Geodata Discovery Service uses standard HTTP, requires a web server, and is easy to integrate into standard web security frameworks.

For more information about the Z39.50 search protocol, please refer to: The National Information Standards Organization at http://www.cni.org/pub/NISO/docs/Z39.50-brochure/. There are two official versions of the ANSI/NISO standard in general use today. Version 2 is ANSI/NISO Z39.50-1992, and Version 3 is ANSI/NISO Z39.50-1995. The GeoConnections Discovery Portal uses Version 2. An HTML copy of the Version 2 standard can be viewed at http://www.cni.org/pub/NISO/docs/Z39.50-1992/. The U.S.A Library of Congress at http://lcWeb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/. You can view the full Z39.50 GEO Profile at http://www.blueangeltech.com/standards/GeoProfile/geo22.htm. The many profiles of the Z39.50 standard are listed at http://lcWeb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/profiles/profiles.html.