In adding the AircraftID characteristic, I noticed that there may be some discrepancy between what the DIF-UMM_ECHO Mapping.xlsx file says (v1.9) and how the ingest is actually happening.

Looking at rows 489-492 in particular:

• The "gmd:description" tag under the main EOS_Platform tag shows in the Spreadsheet to have it's Character String value "= Type:" (not really sure what this is)
• The Short Name should be in a "gmi:identifier/gmd:MD_Identifier" tag, with the "gmd:code" being the short name value, and the Description being text that simply says "Platform Short Name", and a "gmd:codeSpace" tag along with it (wasn't clear on how that should be used)
• The Long Name is similar to the Short Name above, except the Description says "Platform Long Name" (and a corresponding value for gmd:codeSpace)

However, in practice, it doesn't seem like it actually ingests that way.  For one thing, it seems to be invalid to have multiple "gmi:identifier" tags.  In the ingest ISO that we are currently sending, it looks like this:

<gmi:platform>
<eos:EOS_Platform id="PLATFORM_IDENTIFIER">
<gmi:identifier>
<gmd:MD_Identifier>
<gmd:code>
<gco:CharacterString>PLATFORM_SHORT_NAME</gco:CharacterString>
</gmd:code>
<gmd:description>
<gco:CharacterString>PLATFORM_LONG_NAME</gco:CharacterString>
</gmd:description>
</gmd:MD_Identifier>
</gmi:identifier>
<gmi:description>
<gco:CharacterString>PLATFORM_DESCRIPTION</gco:CharacterString>
</gmi:description>
<gmi:instrument xlink:href="#INSTRUMENT_ID"/>
</eos:EOS_Platform>
</gmi:platform>

Essentially, the Short Name is in the "gmd:code" part of the identifier, but the Long Name is the "description" of the identifier (and not a separate identifier).  The description of the platform itself is not "Type:" but rather seems to actually be the description of the platform.

My guess is the spreadsheet is incorrect in this case, and that the way we are writing the ISO is indeed the correct way to specify short name, long name, etc.  (After ingesting, when we look at the UMM, for instance, the fields seem to be populated based on the values above).

A related note, too, is that if the value of PLATFORM_DESCRIPTION is longer than 80 characters, it throws a warning message about it.  While this may be a necessary restriction for something on the back-end, it's not really clear from the spreadsheet, and many of our platform descriptions may be longer than 80 characters.  We could truncate, but it would make these descriptions somewhat less useful.

Mostly need clarification as to the "proper" way to ingest platforms.