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                    CALL FOR WORKSHOP PARTICIPATION
                       SDM 92, A Planning Workshop

                Scientific Data Management Workshop, 1992
                           The Role of Metadata 
             in Managing Large Environmental Sciences Datasets

                   Salt Lake City, UT, November 3-5, 1992


Sponsored by:
      the National Science Foundation (PENDING), 
      the U.S. Department of Energy, and 
      the U.S.  Environmental Protection Agency.

SDM 92 is the successor  to the NSF Workshop on Scientific 
Database Management held March 12-13, 1990, at the 
University of Virginia.

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together computer 
science researchers and environmental sciences data 
management practitioners to consider the role  of metadata in 
managing large environmental sciences datasets.  The 
objectives include establishing a common definition of 
metadata, identifying categories of metadata, defining 
problems in managing metadata, and defining problems related 
to linking metadata with primary data.

Workshop participants will be selected on the basis of brief 
position papers addressing the objectives of the workshop.  
Review of position papers will be conducted by the workshop 
organizers and volunteers from among the sponsors and invited 
key participants.

The workshop agenda is appended to this call and will include 
selected presentations from the position papers and invited 
participants.  These will cover both the computer science and 
environmental sciences data management perspectives.  
Invited talks will cover:
    1)     Computer Science View and Summary - An overview of 
             the current research into metadata management and 
             related topics.
    2)     The Environmental Science Enterprise Summarized - An 
             overview of environmental sciences research 
             practices, particularly with respect to how 
             environmental sciences data is managed.

Selected position papers will be organized into three viewpoints:
    1)     User Scientific Data System Experience Reports - 
             Presentations describing specific environmental 
             sciences data management systems.  Includes a 
             description of data levels, data structures, 
             relationships between data and metadata, data 
             volumes, and rates.  Issues related to data collection 
             and dissemination.
    2)     MetaData Standards & the User View - Presentations 
             defining metadata, identifying categories of metadata, 
             identifying any existing standards, outlining possible 
             new standards.
    3)     MetaData Management - Presentations that describe
             current technology for scientific data management 
             enterprises, describe research areas that address 
             issues of scientific information management, identify 
             scientific metadata usage in current technology, 
             discuss scientific data models and contrast with 
             business data models, and discuss the question:  is a 
             scientific information enterprise a different kind of 
             information business with unique problems?

Following each set of position paper presentations, the 
participants will break into small working groups to define 
pertinent issues and propose courses of action that address 
those issues.  Each working group will report its findings to 
the full workshop before the workshop proceeds to the next set 
of presentations.  The final activity of the workshop will be to 
identify research problems related to metadata and planning 
for documenting the results of the workshop.  The goal is to 
provide guidance to a major sector in the research community 
by focusing attention on metadata research issues that will 
directly support the real national issues in cleanup and 
management of our environment.  

The results of the workshop will be documented in a technical 
report edited by the organizers and issued by Battelle / Pacific 
Northwest Laboratory(*), an article summarizing the results 
submitted to an element of the computing literature selected 
by the participants (e.g., IEEE Computer or SIGMOD Bulletin), 
and through a panel session to be proposed for the SIGMOD 
1993 conference.

Metadata, i.e. data about data, is an important element of 
scientific data sets.  Traditionally metadata might be thought 
of as the notes in the lab notebook that accompany the record 
of the primary data, i.e. the data values observed by the 
scientist.  The automated collection or generation of large 
datasets, i.e. terabytes and up, requires formal means of 
capturing and managing metadata.  Without integrated 
metadata these large datasets are difficult to use because 
scientists cannot establish the context within which the data 
were collected, generated or analyzed.  It is the metadata that 
establishes that context.

Current activities and practices in the environmental sciences 
provide specific examples of the importance of metadata.  In 
Atmospheric Science, for example, modern field programs are 
typically large, multi-discipline, multi-agency, and multi-
investigator efforts with land, sea, air and space based 
instrumentation operating under a wide range of conditions.  
Data which documents the platform and instrument conditions, 
the operational environment and interfering sources of noise 
are critical to primary data analysis.  These data are all 
metadata and underscore the importance of developing 
standard approaches to recording and handling metadata as a 
critical dataset in its own right, and in linking metadata with 
the primary data.

There is little discussion in the literature of metadata in the 
context of scientific data and its management.  Metadata is 
primarily discussed as information about the structure of a 
database, rather than as information about the contents of the 
database.  There is a need to focus attention in the Computer 
Science research community on the problems of dealing with 
the latter type of metadata in an integrated manner.  The 
expectation is that new approaches to managing large 
scientific databases with integrated primary data and 
metadata will enable the scientific research activities that 
depend on such data.

_TOPICS_    We solicit papers describing original ideas and 
new results on theoretical and practical aspects of all forms 
of scientific data management.  Major themes to be covered 
include, but are not limited to:

      1)  What is (the logical data model for ) metadata?
              =>  Where does metadata come from?
              =>  How is metadata (to be) generated?
              =>  How is metadata (to be) collected?
              =>  What is the taxonomy of metadata?
                     -  associated with the source of primary data
                     -  associated with the context of primary data
                     -  associated with abstractions of primary data
                           (e.g., reduced views, visualization,...)
      2)  Problems in managing metadata.
              =>  How should metadata be stored 
                      (with or separate from primary data)?
              =>  How metadata is (will be) used?
      3)  How to maintain the relationship between metadata 
              and the primary data?
      4)  What is the value-added of metadata?  Conversely, 
              what is the cost of not having metadata?
      5)  Discussions of practical experience in acquiring and 
              managing metadata.

_PAPERS_   Authors are invited to submit 3 copies of a short 
position paper of at most 2,000 words by mail, fax, or e-mail 
before September 25, 1992, to:        

   Ronald B. Melton                  David E. Maier
   Pacific Northwest Laboratory      Oregon Graduate Institute of
   PO Box 999, m/s K1-74                 Science and Technology
   Richland, WA  99352  USA          19600 N. W. Von Neumann Drive
                                     Beaverton, OR  97006-1999  USA

   Tel:   (509) 375-2932             Tel:   (503) 690-1154
   Fax:   (509) 375-2698             Fax:   (503) 690-1029
   Internet:   rb_melton@pnl.gov     Internet:   maier@cse.ogi.edu
   Omnet:   r.melton

_PROCEEDINGS_   The proceedings of SDM  92 will be published 
by Battelle / Pacific Northwest Laboratory(*) and will be 
available following the workshop.  Requests for proceedings 
may be sent to:

   Mike DeVaney
   Pacific Northwest Laboratory
   PO Box 999,  m/s K1-87
   Richland, WA  99352  USA

   Tel:   (509) 375-2435
   Fax   (509) 375-6631
   e_mail:  dm_devaney@pnl.gov

_ORGANIZING COMMITTEE_

   D.M. DeVaney           R.B. Melton
   D.E. Maier             J.J. Thomas

_SPONSORS_

   National Science Foundation (NSF)
   United States Department of Energy (DOE)
   United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

_IMPORTANT DATES_

   Deadline for submission:                  September 25, 1992
   Notification of acceptance/rejection      October 5, 1992
   Workshop                                  November  3-5, 1992

_STIPENDS_  

Academic participants may request stipends for travel and per 
diem.  

The granting of stipends is dependent on approval of the 
supporting grant from NSF.  

Academics requesting a travel and per diem stipend must 
indicate with their position paper submission if their 
participation depends on the stipend.
______________________________________________________________

*  -  Pacific Northwest Laboratory is operated by Battelle 
        Memorial Institute for the United States Department of 
        Energy under Contract DE-AC06-76RLO 1830.