Modernizing Your Metadata, AKA: Dinner and a Metadata

Face it. That mp is one far-out metadata tool. It slices. It dices. It churns out that HTML, SGML, XML, and DIF metadata. Tonight, on Dinner and a Metadata, we are going to use mp to make pizza and update that funky old bell-bottom 1994 CSDGM metadata into stylin' 1998 CSDGM metadata.

First, assemble the cast of ingredients.

• One pizza, frozen (MAMA LINGUINI's preferred)
• Crushed red pepper flakes
• One half dozen medium size mp compatible ASCII form metadata documents created under the 1994 CSDGM
• One copy of mp

And... let's begin

• Preheat oven to 375 Fahrenheit.
• Boot up the big iron and wait for all those service packs to load.
• Remove the pizza from the wrapper, being careful not place the empty wrapper over your head lest ye asphyxiate thyself.
• Sprinkle some red pepper flakes on the pizza.
• Ah, what the heck! Sprinkle some more red pepper flakes on the pizza.
• Place pizza in the oven.
• Navigate to the location of your extremely fine June 8, 1994 CSDGM compliant metadata document that passed mp with no errors last year. One of them was called fishinhole.met as I recall.
• Sic the new improved (8/31/98 or later) version of mp on the metadata so:

mp -t fishinhole.txt -h fishinhole.html -s fishinhole.sgml fishinhole.met

mp reports that it is upgrading your metadata to FGDC-STD-001-1998, which means that all your output documents (.txt, .html, .sgml) are now upgraded to the new 1998 metadata standard! Fast and easy!

• One more step now... You need to update your source ASCII metadata document so you don't have to keep doing this. Copy the fishinhole.txt document over the fishinhole.met document.
• Check the pizza. Whoa, the cheese is still frozen! That mp is fast!
• Upgrade the other five 1994 CSDGM compliant metadata documents the same way, or write that little five-liner script that will upgrade all the metadata on your system.
• Remove pizza from oven and dig in.
• Reflect on folly of using too many red pepper flakes.