GeoCASe Infrastructure

This code installs the basic infrastructure that is used for the Geoscientific Collection Access Service (GeoCASe). It consists of Docker containers of the following software components

• the Berlin Harvesting and Indexing Toolkit (BHIT; https://wiki.bgbm.org/bhit/)
• the database management system MariaDB (https://mariadb.org)
• the content management system Drupal 7 (https://www.drupal.org/drupal-7.0)

Requirements

• Linux operating system
• installed Docker engine (https://www.docker.com/)
• internet connection during installation procedure
• knowledge in the usage of Docker, Drupal 7 and BHIT
• knowledge about the idea of Biodiversity Standards and decentral data provision

Installation

In order to roll out the components please follow the steps below. The deployment is designed for Linux OS (tested with Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04)

• clone this Git repository
• copy or rename the file install.cfg.example to install.cfg and edit the configuration in the file
• copy or rename the file bhit/application.properties.example to bhit/applications.properties and configure the BHIT as described here https://wiki.bgbm.org/bhit/index.php/Installation#Edit_the_application.properties_file
• edit the database password for the portal's database user in geocase_portal/geocasePortal.sql
• make install.sh executable with the command chmod +x install.sh
• then start the installation with the command ./install.sh
• follow the instructions of the installation script
• after a successfull installation the BHIT and a Drupal website should be available e.g. BHIT at http://localhost:8080/bhit/ and the Drupal website (GeoCASe Portal) at http://localhost/ (depending on your configuration)
• in order to finalize the connection between BHIT and the Drupal website, you need to manually import the file geocase_portal/geocase_bhit.views.export in the Drupal Views module (e.g. http://localhost/admin/structure/views/import)
• this creates a Block (http://localhost/admin/structure/block) called BHIT that must be activated by assigning a region in the template in order to display the block.

Usage

In order to access data in the portal you need to register and harvest data sources in BHIT for aggregating the decentral data. Only after harvesting the created View and Block in Drupal will display data in the portal. Please visit https://wiki.bgbm.org/bhit/ to learn how to use BHIT.

Disclaimer

The code deploys the underlying GeoCASe infrastructure components and not a copy of http://geocase.eu! Thus, no content and/or design is shipped with this code.

You use this code on your own risk!! There is no guarantee for a state-of-the-art web security in these services. The authors of this code are not liable for any harm or damage caused through the usage of this code, these instructions or any external sources used.

It is highly recommended to deploy the infrastructure in a secured virtual environment e.g. on a local maschine, instead of a production server with other services.