The Fedora Project DLF Forum Albuquerque, NM November 17, 2003

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The Fedora Project DLF ForumAlbuquerque,
NMNovember 17, 2003
Sandy Payette Cornell Information Science
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The Fedora Project

• Fedora Digital Object Repository System
• Extensible digital object model
• Repository System exposed via Web service APIs
• Scalable, persistent storage for content and
  metadata
• Local and remote content
• Associate services with objects
• Content versioning
• Fedora Use cases
• Content Management (CMS)
• Digital Library architecture
• Digital Asset Management
• Institutional Repository
• Scholarly publishing
• Preservation
• Open source software

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Fedora History

• Research (1997-present)
• DARPA and NSF-funded research project at Cornell
• Reference implementation developed at Cornell
• First Application (1999-2001)
• University of Virginia digital library prototype
• Scale/stress testing for 10,000,000 objects
• Open Source Software (2002-present)
• Andrew W. Mellon Foundation granted Virginia and
  Cornell 1 million to develop a
  production-quality Fedora system
• Fedora 1.0 released in May 2003

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Fedora Motivations

• Generic model to manage/access heterogeneous
  content
• Operations via the digital object abstraction
  default disseminator
• Extensibility
• Add new functionality to objects via service
  associations
• Object Lifecycle and preservation
• Content versioning and event history
• Content repurposing
• Same content in different objects dynamic
  transformations
• Easy integration with other applications and
  systems
• Web services with open APIs
• Clear separation of server from clients/web user
  interfaces
• Does not assume any one workflow or end-user
  application

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Digital Object Model
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Digital Object Model Architectural View
Digital object identifier
Persistent ID (
PID
)
Default Disseminator
Service view methods for disseminating content
Extension
Extension
Datastream (item)
Content view Set of data and metadata items
Datastream (item)
Datastream (item)
Internal view key metadata necessary to manage
the object
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Digital Object Model Simple Example

• Get Profile
• List Items
• Get Item
• List Methods
• Get DC Record

PID uva-lib100
Default Disseminator
Image Disseminator

• Get Thumbnail
• Get Medium
• Get High
• Get Very High

Image (mrsid)
DC (xml)
Thumbnail (jpeg)
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Some Common Use Cases

• Simple Image
• Image Manip DC graph
• Scholarly Publication
• Document Transformation

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Content Versioning

• Demo

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Repository Systemsoftware distribution
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Fedora 1.2 Software Feature Set

• Open Fedora APIs
• Repository as web services (REST and SOAP
  bindings) WSDL interface defs
• Flexible Digital Object Model
• Content View objects as bundle of items (content
  and metadata)
• Service View objects as a set of service methods
  (behaviors)
• Extensible functionality by associating services
  with objects
• Repository System
• Core Services Management, Access/Search, OAI-PMH
• Storage XML object store relational db object
  cache relational db object registry
• Mediation - auto-dispatching to distributed web
  services for content transformation
• Auto-Indexing system metadata and DC record of
  each object
• HTTP Basic Authentication and Access Control
• Built-in disseminator services XSLT x-form,
  image manipulation, xml-to-PDF
• Content Versioning
• Automatic version control (saves version of
  content/metadata when modified)
• Enables date-time stamped API requests (see
  object as it looked at a point in time)

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Fedora Repository Service Interfaces

• Management Service (API-M)
• Ingest - XML-encoded object submission
• Create - interactive object creation via API
  requests
• Maintain - interactive object modification via
  API requests
• Validate application of integrity rules to
  objects
• Identify - generate unique object identifiers
• Security - authentication and access control
• Preserve - automatic content versioning and audit
  trail
• Export - XML-encoded object formats
• Access Service (API-A and API-A-LITE)
• Search - search repository for objects
• Object Reflection - what disseminations can the
  object provide?
• Object Dissemination - request a view of the
  objects content
• OAI-PMH Provider Service
• OAI-DC records

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Client and Web Service Interactions
user
user
user
Client application
Server application
web browser
Client application
Fedora Service APIs
Fedora Repository System
Content Transform Service
Content Transform Service
External Service Dispatch
API
API
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Fedora Mapping to OAIS
Ingest Formats (SIPs)
Export Formats (DIPs)
Fedora Repository System
METS 1.2/FO FOXML METS 1.3 DIDL
METS 1.2/FO FOXML METS 1.3 DIDL
R1.3
R1.3
R2.0
R2.0
Archival Format (AIP)
FOXML Fedora Object XML DIDL Digital Item
Description Language (MPEG21)
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Fedora Software Distribution Package

• Open Source (Mozilla Public License)
• 100 Java (Sun Java J2SDK1.4)
• Supporting Technologies
• Apache Tomcat 4.1 and Apache Axis (SOAP)
• Xerces 2-2.0.2 for XML parsing and validation
• Saxon 6.5 for XSLT transformation
• Schematron 1.5 for validation
• MySQL and Mckoi relational database
• Oracle 9i support
• Deployment Platforms
• Windows 2000, NT, XP
• Solaris
• Linux

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Fedora in Use
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Projects using Fedora

• University of Virginia digital library (images,
  EAD, e-texts)
• VTLS basis for new commercial product (library
  system)
• Indiana University EVIA Digital Archive (video)
• Northwestern academic technologies (images, art,
  video, e-texts)
• Rutgers University digital library (e-journals,
  numeric data)
• Tufts University educational (VUE/concept maps)
  digital library
• Yale University Electronic Records Archive
• New York University Humanities Computing Group

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Sampling of sites using/evaluating Fedora

• JSTOR
• American Geophysical Union 
• NSDL at Cornell
• Cornell Information Technologies
• British Library
• National Library of Portugal
• Society of Biblical Literature
• National Archives of Australia
• Office of Defense Resources, Thailand
• Monash University, Australia
• Oxford Digital Library

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Fedora Downloads since May 2003

• Total downloads 1427
• Average downloads per day 9
• Countries 32
• Types of orgs
• Universities libraries, IT, departments
• Software and technology companies
• Defense/military
• Banks
• National libraries and archives
• Publishers
• Research labs
• Library automation vendors
• Scholarly societies

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Fedora _at_ Tufts
design solution
FEDORA is proving to be a flexible application
development platform. Developers may dedicate
more time toward building audience specific DL
and educational applications. Content tools and
digital resources are more easily shared among DL
applications.
Slide courtesy of David Kahle
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Fedora _at_ Tufts
design challenge
Create a visual tool to assist students and
faculty in organizing and creating pathways
through local files, digital library resources
and WWW content.
Slide courtesy of David Kahle
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Fedora _at_ Tufts
content maps
container node
Faculty may sketch out their course content,
relationships and pathways through this content
using a simple set of moveable objects or nodes.
web resource
file node
relationship
notes
Slide courtesy of David Kahle
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Fedora _at_ Tufts
OKI FEDORA
Leveraging OKI technical standards will
facilitate the sharing, distribution and
integration of this new educational tool in
educational systems beyond Tufts.
Slide courtesy of David Kahle
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images art
Fedora _at_ Northwestern
Slide courtesy of Bill Parod
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Fedora _at_ Northwestern
Slide courtesy of Bill Parod
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Fedora _at_ Northwestern
Image dissemination with Flash zoom viewer
Slide courtesy of Bill Parod
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Fedora _at_ Northwestern
Slide courtesy of Bill Parod
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Fedora _at_ NorthwesternBehaviors by Type
Slide courtesy of Bill Parod
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Search Angelica
UVa EAD Collections
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UVa Images
image
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Future Software Releases
December 2003 December 2004

• Fedora Object XML (FOXML)
• Internal storage format direct expression of
  Fedora object model
• Better support for relationships (kinship
  metadata)
• Better support for audit trail (event history)
• Format identifiers for dynamic service binding
• Shibboleth authentication
• Policy Enforcement
• XACML expression language
• Fedora policy enforcement module
• Web interface for easy content submission
• Batch object modification utility
• Administrative Reporting
• Object Event History (ABC/RDF disseminations)
• Better support for collections
• New ingest and export formats (METS1.3, DIDL)

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Future Development Proposals

• Digital Library in a Box
• Full-featured DL application with Fedora inside
• Optimized for common set of content types
• Fedora Power Server
• Integrity Management Tools
• Service and link liveness checker
• Fault Tolerance
• Mirroring and Replication
• Peer-to-peer interoperability features
• Repository clustering
• Load balancing
• Object Creation Tools
• Workflow applications based on content models
• Web interface for document/content submission

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Questions
www.fedora.info Release 1.2 on December 10, 2003