18. Read-only Mode

Metacat has a feature to place itself in read-only mode - its content can NOT be modified; however, it can be read and searched. The default setting of Metacat is not-read-only mode. You may make Metacat read-only by setting the value of a property to “true” in the metacat-site.properties file, then restart Tomcat.

application.readOnlyMode=true

To cancel the read-only mode, set the property back to “false”, then restart Tomcat.

application.readOnlyMode=false

When Metacat is in read-only mode, the following DataONE API methods are disabled:

DataONE Member Node API

- MN.create
- MN.update
- MN.archive
- MN.delete
- MN.replicate
- MN.systemMetadataChanged
- MN.updateSystemMetadata

Methods on the DataONE Coordinating Node API are not disabled because the Coordinating Nodes currently have a different read-only mechanism.