Federation of Metadata Registries

Federating metadata registries introduces a range of problems to address, from identifying the commonality in data models across registries, to agreeing on a well-defined data dictionary. As more and more registries participate in the federation, the number of problems to solve can potentially rise to unmanageable levels. While solutions to these issues are researched, generic federation systems must be developed to address several common issues: crosswalking of registries; identifying the metadata entities; and providing a place holder to capture domain specific solutions. This paper presents a conceptual model for such a federation system that will address these common issues. The experience gained during the design and implementation of two metadata registries, ADL-R and FeDCOR, is adequately leveraged in the design. This paper empirically defines "Federation System" as a quintuple, F = (R, C, K, I, D) where F is a Federation System; R is a set of registries participating in the federation; C is a set of common features in the federates; K is a set of domain independent algorithms to cross-walk registries (every algorithm in the set is a function over C); I is an identification system; and D is a set of domain specific algorithms to cross-walk registries (every algorithm in the set is a function over C).