Each Mersea product is identified by a unique short name.
The short name follow standard rules : the short name is divided in 4 parts separated with '-'. For instance, ''CORIOLIS-GLOBAL-NRT-OBS" is the short name for the near real time in-situ data delivered by CORIOLIS and  intended to be assimilated into forecasting systems.

• The first part of the short name describe the name of the operator which work the product out. It could be the short name of the organization as described in the "Description of Work, part 1", page 9 (DOW_part1). Then it will be JRC, INGV, MERCATOR or any other participant. Depending on the organization the operator would like to emphasize, it could also be a reference to operators which are not listed in the Description of Work. Thus CORIOLIS, CERSAT or AVISO will be acceptable operators for products.
• The second part of the short name describe the coverage of the product dataset. The acceptable coverages are :
• GLOBAL : global oceans.
• MED : mediteranean sea.
• ATL : Atlantic ocean.
• NATL : North Atlantic region.
• ARCTIC : Arctic ocean.
• BALTIC : Baltic sea.
• NWSHELF : North West European shelf.
• The third part of the short name is a free string which length is between 3 and 8 characters. The string is used to identify the product among the other product of the same type, from the same operator, on the same area.
• The last part of the short name describe the type of product. The acceptable type of products are :
• OBS : for observation data (in-situ or satellite data).
• FOR : for forecasting model output (forcing fields or ocean  models).
• Later we should consider IND for indicators or quality assesment products.
  

The static catalog of product is available at http://www.mersea.eu.org/html/information/catalog/products/catalog.html
The products are listed TEP by TEP.
For each product, you can see : the short name, a short overview and a link to the ID-card (html).

Each Mersea product is described by a standard ID-card.
You can check the content of a product ID-card by accessing its URL with your favorite browser. The URL is composed with the product short name which has been described above.

The URL is composed as follow :
                            http://www.mersea.eu.org/html/information/catalog/products/<product_short_name>.html

For example, you can see the actual description :

The information available in the ID-card is extracted from metadata organized in an ISO19115 standard XML flux. The XML information is edited in a friendly HTML format thanks  to XSL  Transformation.
You can request the ISO19115 description of a product by clicking on the XML icon () at the top of the ID-card.


We have seen you can build yourself the URL for HTML ID-card, you can build the URL to get the ISO19115 XML product description as well :
The URL to get ISO19115 XML product description is composed as follow :
            http://www.mersea.eu.org/html/information/catalog/products/<product_short_name>.xml

For example, you can see the actual description :



The XML output is provided so that you can get and update your own product descriptions. We can disseminate the ISO19115 XML description to other catalog resources as well (Catalog Interoperability).

The product ID-card is divided into three parts :

1. product desription (one and only one)
   
2. delivery and viewing services (one to n services)
   
3. related documentation (0 to n documents).
   

Now you can get the detailed the product template description at : http://www.mersea.eu.org/Information/product_template_help.html
A tutorial explaining how to register your own product is available as well.

PRODUCT SEARCH FACILITY

Two kinds of search facility are provided.

request the catalog on given criteria :

At http://www.mersea.eu.org/Information/dynamic/MerseaSearch  a form is provided. You can request the catalog on given criteria :

• Product short name.
  
• Product type (in-situ, remote sensing, forcing fields or ocean forecast).
• Parameters Category.
• Parameters.
• Geographical limits.
• Geographic scale (global, regional or local).
• Temporal start ans stop.
• Distributor (ie TEP).

You can get the response as XML metadata or HTML edition of results (using the radio button at the top of the form).
The HTML result page contains a reminder of the applied request and, for each found product : the short name, the 200 first characters of the overview, and links to ISO19115 XML description or HTML ID-card.

search engine-like form :

In various MERSEA pages you can find a small search engine-like form.


You can search products matching keywords. You can even use boolean operators like 'AND' , 'OR' and 'NOT' or wild card like '*'.

You can add this form in your own Mersea pages by copying/pasting the following snip of html code :

<form action="http://www.mersea.eu.org/Information/dynamic/MerseaSearch"> <input type="hidden" name="project" value="mersea"/> &nbsp;<br/> &nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Product search </b><br/> <table> <tr> <td><input type="text" name="keywords" value="" size="15" /></td> <td> <input name="action" type="image" id="go_btn" value="submit" src="http://www.mersea.eu.org/images/btn_go.gif" width="26" height="21" border="0" alt="Go Button"/> </td> </tr> </table> &nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/queryparsersyntax.html" target="_blank" > <u>help</u> </a> <a href="http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/queryparsersyntax.html" target="_blank" > <img src="http://www.mersea.eu.org/images/info_icon.gif" border="0" /> </a> </form>

The search facility can be automatically requested by using the http URL followed by the criteria names and requested value :

http://www.mersea.eu.org/Information/dynamic/MerseaSearch?output_type=[xml|html]&project=mersea&[<criteria_name>=<requested_value>]*

Where :

• AND between the different criteria.
• OR between the same criteria