ROLE OF SEMANTIC PRACTICES IN CHRONOS SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

The CHRONOS Systems (www.chronos.org), an NSF-funded geoinformatics project dedicated to the development of a network of data and tools for sedimentary geology and paleobiology, employs a set of practices to describe and discover resources that provide a path toward semantic environments. Utilization of Resource Description Format (RDF), Really Simple Syndication (RSS), ontology files and various metadata schema provide a foundation for a set of working procedures that will be demonstrated. A collection of web services and portlets have been created that provide work flows for transformation and presentation of various data. This services oriented architecture is open and available to any community or individual who wishes to use them. Procedures will be shown for contributing data to this structure and using the services to process value added versions of this input in various resulting formats or generic XML. Interfaces into predefined database queries that can return results to a user through this system are also available. Further examples on how to incorporate the data of participating sites into a web based environment or application will also be shown. An early look at the work being done to apply these practices to the services oriented architecture (SOA) and grid applications of the CHRONOS System are presented providing an a view on some early concepts for semantically enhanced applications.