ECAI Infrastructure

Implementation of the ECAI information technology architecture has lead to the creation of a technical infrastructure. The infrastructure is composed of software, web tools, and distributed servers.

ECAI METADATA CLEARINGHOUSE
The system developed for managing and cataloging data is the ECAI Metadata Clearinghouse. ECAI's Metadata Clearinghouse includes records which describe datasets or map layers. ECAI metadata records include bibliographic and descriptive metadata for resource discovery allowing identification of resources relevant to a particular place, time or thematic interest. They also contains connection metadata for each dataset which allows software such as TimeMap™ to connect to the data server across the Internet (or to local files), drill down into the data and integrate results from different datasets (heterogeneous distributed database query.)

TimeMap™
The set of software tools developed to connect metadata and provide a visualization tool for viewing diverse data sets is TimeMap™. TimeMap™ is composed of two main components: TMWin -- the tools for creating projects and cataloging datasets and TMJava -- a time/place visualization tool.

TimeMap™ includes the downloadable desk top tools: TMWin, which uses the clearinghouse metadata to find, query and display cultural datasets in a time enabled map-based environment. The maps integrate data from datasets which may never have been produced with integration in mind. The maps also allow interactive modification, querying and web-style navigation to linked resources such as web pages, images and multimedia.

ECAI SERVERS
Servers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Sydney, Australia are used to serve the ECAI web site, ECAI Metadata Clearinghouse, and for the development and hosting of pilot projects. In addition, ECAI has established working relationships with several large data services dedicated to maintaining specific types of data.

TimeMap™ is a registered trademark of the University of Sydney.