## 3 Results and Discussion  
### Employing Landcover to Test the Process  
As part of an example to check whether it is possible to convey the process from a sample dataset to a verifiable and compliant disseminated layer, the case was made for the establishment of the Maltese Landcover dataset which was created by the national environment agency (Malta Environment and Planning Authority) as well as the European Environment Agency. The dataset was acquired and transformed to conform to the INSPIRE [52] revisions as established by the revised draft guidelines. The data source used was that prepared for the Land Cover Mapping in Malta for the years 1990, 2000 and 2006, which included 19 categories (landcover types). The mapping exercise was based on the analysis of different data sources; remotely-sensed data employing Landsat TM7; data pertaining to the National Mapping Agency at MEPA including base maps; orthoimagery; thematic data and _in situ_ surveys. All document creation and metadata is available from the EEA CDR website [53]. The schema used for this exercise was that identified by the Plan4 all guidelines and the Application Schema as the \"Land Cover\" Schema, where most of the attributes were not included in the original CLC2006 map and in turn new datasets had to be integrated in order to follow this schema. This transformation exercise was further enhanced through the implementation of the updated INSPIRE data specifications published in June 2011 which added new attributes not formerly in the Plan4 all schema and which ensure that all the different datasets across the EU conform to the same requirements inclusive of projection, styled layer descriptor (SLD) and object type. The spatial transformation was more complex due to the fact that Malta holds all its data in a truncated ED50 format which required following a number of steps in order to achieve transformation to the final required projection. This required the restoration of the truncated 4 in Northings and 39 in Eastings, a reprojecting to WGS84: EPSG: 36233, conversion to shp format from.tab format (which in Malta was originally in MapInfo.tab polygon format and was converted to ESRI.shp format for this exercise). The latter causes a problem due to the fact that the attribute names are truncated due to the ANSI conversion protocols experienced. Another issue envisaged in the transformation was that most attributes had to be given a \"string\" type and to ensure the re-establishment of the colour schemes that were lost in the transition and needed to be recreated in the geoserver. The metadata part of process was enabled through the employment of the INSPIRE Metadata Editor [54] made available by the Joint Research Centre (JRC). The output was read through an xml tool that was created through a project entitled \"Institution Building in the Environment Sector\", which was part of the Transition Facility Programme for Malta-2006. The process entailed reviewing the Plan4 all Metadata Documentation through the Plan4 all Portal which was used for both creation and storage which for the Maltese case both xml and xls versions were created. This ensured that users without xml readers could still review the metadata. This process was further enhanced through the employment of the relative feature catalogues, UML Models and the knowledge of basic coding which allowed editing of the SLD layers pertaining to each particular data layer. In this case two SLD files were created due to the fact that the attribute which pointed to the \"Classification\" attribute in the revised schema pointed to the \"coverageName\" attribute. The original colour scheme (Figure 6a)established by the EEA was transformed to an interim grey-polygon version (Figure 6b) until the final SLD was established which resulted in the final colour scheme for the project (Figure 6c). The final parts of the process entailed the verification and testing processes which were carried out on the data input, indicators and changes steps effected during the transformation process.