.. _purpose:

Goals
=====

Initially conceived in 2010, the overal vision of the development team was to:

1. **Create an Open Source standalone metadata publisher in Python**
  
   .. image:: ../../_static/python-logo.gif
      :width: 211px
      :height: 71px
      :target: http://www.python.org/
      
   .. image:: ../../_static/opensource_logo.png
      :width: 80px
      :height: 90px
      :target: http://opensource.org/     
      
   Many other metadata publishing options exist, but mostly in Java.  Python is 
   an Open Source scripting language, that is supported on all major platforms,
   and is very popular in the geospatial world today.
     
2. **Make it lightweight and easy to configure: focused on one task, publishing**

   Keep the goals of the project to simple metadata publishing; don't get into
   other tasks such as metadata editing and acquisition.  Rather than a bloated
   "kitchen sink" concept. limit the software to easy metadata publishing.
   
   .. image:: ../../_static/kitchen-sink.png
      :width: 425px
      :height: 320px 
      :scale: 50      
      
3. **Design so additional metadata formats can be easily supported.**

   Although initially the core metadata model was Dublin Core, design the sofware
   so that many other metadata formats can be plugged in.
   
   .. image:: ../../_static/plug.jpg
      :width: 549px
      :height: 242px
      :scale: 50
      
.. note::
    The initial pycsw 'manifesto' is still available `here <http://www.kralidis.ca/blog/2011/02/04/help-wanted-baking-a-csw-server-in-python/>`__.
    It is a nice way to understand the project's vision.