4.1 Summary of Project Results and Issues

Due to impenetrable software bugs with the ESRI software, our final products are incomplete.  While on the surface, this makes our work look like a failure, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.  We have gained an immense amount of knowledge about both the FGDC and ISO metadata standards, as well, an in-depth understanding of how ontologies influence data structures.  In addition, on the user’s side, we deal with the issue of semantics in search engines, and interoperability of both metadata formats and datasets.  Lastly, but most importantly, the experience gained dealing with XML is crucial in understanding how to use XML to develop an “Ideal Solution.”  There is a great deal of potential with the use of XML in metadata environments, thus the value of this knowledge cannot go unsung.  

The knowledge gained from the technical and technical problems has allowed us to develop a theoretical “Ideal Solution” to our problem, which is introduced in chapter 6.  All of the problems with ESRI Metadata Explorer has led us to the conclusion that a proprietary version of a SDD for SFU should be written in a programming language such as C or JAVA.  This will allow a much greater amount of customization on the developer’s part, and the University’s as well.  Systems such as Metadata Explorer are referred to as “canned” software solutions, and usually cost a lot of money, but don’t provide the flexibility that most organizations require.  If we had had access to a Microsoft-based server to put our final product on, the SDD would have been developed in VB.NET, and we likely could have even attempted to build the “Ideal Solution” at this time, instead of marking it as a phase 2 project.