For Developers

Controlled Vocabularies: Methods | Items | Collection Methods | Materials

The controlled vocabularies employed by the SedDB database are listed at the bottom of this page; these dynamic lists are automatically updated. Clicking on the orange links above will take you directly to the portion of the list that you are interested in. Please note: Controlled vocabularies listed below pertain to the new and updated version of SedDB which will be released in beta very shortly. There may be items in these lists which are not included in the current version of SedDB.

Web Services

SedDB's Web Feature Service (WFS) allows any OGC-enabled client to access the sample location data for samples in SedDB. To access the SedDB WFS specify the following URL to your OGC-enabled client:

http://beta.www.seddb.org/mapserver/wfs/seddb?version=1.0.0&service=WFS&request=GetCapabilities

Data Model

SedDB's database structure is a modified version of the PetDB data model (Lehnert et al. 2000) reconfigured to accomodate metadata particular to sediment samples. 

Download the most recent version of the SedDB Schema (PDF 28KB)

The Geoinformatics for Geochemistry program has recently developed a more generic, integrative, and flexible model for geochemical data, the GeoChemical Data Model GCDM, to serve as the core data structure for our entire suite of geochemical databases (Djapic, Vinayagamoorthy, & Lehnert 2006). This data model is compliant with standards defined in GeoSciML, a markup language developed by the IUGS Commission for Geoscience Information to represent Geoscience information associated with geologic maps and observations. Attributes in GCDM such as method, sample and item measured can be mapped to corresponding types within GeoSciML, others like observation point or observed value can be incorporated into the GeoSciML concepts of method, event, and measured value.

The primary new capabilities of the GCDM include:

• description of spatial and temporal components of samples and measurements (e.g. depth in core, time-series and sensor measurements, point analyses on a microprobe slide);
• capability to store 'derived' (model) types of observed values such as age models for cores or end-member compositions for seafloor hydrothermal springs;
• capability to track relationships between samples and sub-samples,
• ability to integrate data at any level of sample granularity;
• capability to accommodate analytical metadata at the level of individual measurements.

Download the document "Serving Geochemical Data Using GeoSciML Compliant Web Services: Next Step in Developing a Generic GeoChemical Database" (DOC 32KB)

View the abstract, slideshow, and webcast: "New approach to Designing Geochemical Databases" presented at the Geoinformatics 2006 conference.