IU Technology Architecture Lodge
Random and not so random thoughts from Raymond Yee, primarily on the scholarly and educational use of the Web, libraries, educational technology, and information management

Author:		Raymond Yee
Posted:		5/23/2003; 8:02:54 AM
Topic:		Fedora 1.0 is ready for download
Msg #:		805 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next:		804/806
Reads:		4421

Fedora 1.0 is ready for download #

I've been keeping an eye on Fedora for a while. Fedora is an open source digital repository software system. As I build the Scholar's Box (which I need to describe more), I'm looking for pieces of infrastructure that I'll be able to plug into. Fedora promises a datastore that handles arbitrary objects. The designers of Fedora have built in behaviors for objects using web services. Although Fedora is designed to handle institutional repositories, I've been told that I should have no problem running it on a personal computer. I'll be curious to see how heavy or light-weight it is and how hard it will be to use out of the box.

Let me quote how the Fedora project describes the software:

The Fedora project was established under the auspices of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to build a digital object repository management system based on the Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture (Fedora). The new system, designed to be a foundation upon which interoperable web-based digital libraries, institutional repositories and other information management systems can be built, demonstrates how distributed digital library architecture can be deployed using web-based technologies, including XML and Web services.

Jointly developed by the University of Virginia and Cornell University, the system completely implements the Fedora architecture, adding utilities such as batch creation tools and interactive programs for creating behavior objects that facilitate repository management. The version 1.0 of the software is aimed at providing a repository that can handle one million objects efficiently using only open source software. Later versions of the software will add important functionality, such as policy enforcement, versioning of objects and performance enhancement to support very large repositories.

The software has the following key features:

It is written in Java 1.4.
A repository is exposed as a Web service and is described using Web Services Description Language (WSDL).
Digital object behaviors are implemented as linkages to distributed web services that are expressed using WSDL and implemented via HTTP GET/POST or SOAP bindings.
Digital objects are encoded and stored as XML using the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS).
All of the software resulting from the project is freely available under an open-source Mozilla Public License.

Posted by Raymond Yee on 5/23/03; 8:03:01 AM
from the Unclassified dept.
Discuss

Last update: Friday, May 23, 2003 at 8:03:35 AM.

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