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GeoNetwork Enterprise 2023.8

GeoCat is pleased to present our latest distribution of GeoNetwork Enterprise 2023.8.

To migrate from GeoNetwork Enterprise 2022 or earlier, see the Upgrade guide.

Overview

GeoNetwork Enterprise is an outstanding catalog application providing record publishing and search capabilities to share information. Built to support international open standards GeoNetwork offers metadata editing and management with a focus on geospatial content.

GeoNetwork Enterprise 2023.8 is a recommended upgrade for all our customers and compatible with GeoCat Bridge for both ArcGIS Desktop and QGIS Desktop.

GeoNetwork Enterprise Plugin repository

GeoNetwork Enterprise is provided as a base package which can be extended with plugins. Plugins have an independent lifecycle. Each plugin advertises its compatibility with relevant GeoNetwork versions.

Plugins are available via the plugin repository.

Documentation on how to install the plugin is available in the plugin.

GeoNetwork Enterprise Documentation

Documentation is now available at https://docs.geocat.com/find/2023

GeoNetwork Technology

GeoNetwork Enterprise 2023.8 is based on GeoNetwork opensource 4.2.17 release. This version of GeoNetwork has switched the search engine to use ElasticSearch instead of Lucene, as in previous versions.

See how to Install and Configure Elasticsearch.

This section describes the main changes in this new version.

This release is a maintenance update focused on security hardening, stability, and bug fixes. It contains no new user-facing features, but includes several fixes that reduce security risk. Upgrading is recommended for all users, especially those running a publicly accessible catalog.

Security Improvements

  • Fixed several places where page content wasn't properly cleaned before being displayed. Screens such as the broken-link dashboards, the WFS indexing dashboard, map feature tooltips, and the user search results could display data (like URLs, file names, or search terms) in a way that could be misused to run unwanted code in another user's browser. This content is now always shown as plain, safe text.
  • Cleaned up map feature information and layer credit text. When hovering over a feature on the map, or viewing the credit/attribution text for a background map layer, that information is now sanitized before being shown, closing a similar risk to the one above.
  • Strengthened the login redirect check for Single Sign-On. When signing in through an external identity provider (OIDC or Keycloak), the catalog now verifies that the page you're returned to after login genuinely belongs to the catalog itself, rather than trusting whatever address was supplied. This prevents the login process from being misused to redirect users to an unrelated, potentially malicious site.
  • Tightened the security of the metadata "formatter" engine. Formatters control how a metadata record's details are displayed. This update restricts what operations a formatter template is allowed to perform, reducing the risk of a formatter being used to run unintended actions on the server.
  • Security fix for GHSA-7g84-xmh5-w98w

Bug Fixes

Harvesting

  • Fixed a crash that could occur in the GeoNetwork, SFTP, and CSW harvesters when a harvested record didn't specify which metadata standard (schema) it used.
  • Fixed a crash when harvesting from other GeoNetwork 4 catalogs where a record's last-modified date was missing or invalid — such records are now harvested correctly instead of causing an error.
  • The GeoNetwork 4 harvester no longer fails outright when a single record from the remote catalog can't be read; the problem record is now skipped and reported, while the rest of the harvest continues normally.
  • The GeoNetwork 4 harvester no longer fails when a remote catalog (running a newer GeoNetwork version) returns extra information it doesn't recognise — that extra information is now safely ignored.

User Management

  • Fixed the "Save" button on the user-editing screen, which wasn't activating properly when ticking the "Is Administrator" checkbox.
  • Fixed an error that prevented deleting a user account if that user had previously left feedback comments on metadata records.

Metadata Editor

  • Fixed online resources format parameter when adding a new online resource.
  • Fixed thumbnail generation from a map layer in the metadata editor when the background map was a WMTS-type layer.
  • The "link to service metadata" dialogue box in the editor now closes properly once a record has been linked to its service.

Batch Editing

  • Fixed an error in batch editing when using "replace" mode with an XPath expression: the tool no longer tries to create a new field when the target field doesn't already exist on a record.

Map Viewer

  • Removed leftover, unused map-styling options from the WFS filter tool that were no longer connected to anything in the interface, simplifying how map filtering works internally.

Settings

  • Fixed a bug in the system settings screen where changing whether a setting could be edited by administrators would accidentally change the setting's actual value instead.
  • Place-name suggestions shown when selecting a geographic area (in the search form and the metadata editor) are now listed alphabetically instead of in an unpredictable order.

Record View

  • Fixed the metadata record page so the "Data model" tab only appears when the record actually contains a feature catalogue. Previously the tab was shown but empty on records without one, such as interactive maps.

Improvements

  • Added explanatory help text for the "category" field when importing metadata.

Documentation

  • Added documentation, with screenshots, explaining how to configure and use the application banner feature.
  • Fixed a broken link in the documentation's navigation menu.

Behind the Scenes

This release also refreshes a number of the third-party components the catalog depends on — including the map rendering library (OpenLayers), the code editor, date and time handling, and coordinate-projection support — to their latest maintenance versions, along with routine updates to the build and release process. These changes don't alter how the catalog looks or behaves day-to-day, but keep it running on current, supported, and secure versions of its underlying technology.