The Fedora Project

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The Fedora Project
Tim Sigmon University of Virginia

• JA-SIG Winter Conference
• December 9, 2003

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This Fedora Project is not the Redhat Fedora
project.
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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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Priorities for digital libraries

• Managing digital resources as if they are all the
  same
• Delivering digital resources as if they are all
  unique and free to participate in any number of
  contexts
• Supporting digital scholarship wherever it may
  lead

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Shortcomings of commercial digital library
products

• Narrow focus on specific media formats (e.g.
  image databases, document management)
• Fail to effectively address interrelationships
  among digital entities
• Fail to address interoperability
• Fail to provide facilities for managing programs
  and tools that deliver digital content.
• Not extensible do not enable easy integration of
  new tools and services

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Fedora History

• Research (1997-present)
• DARPA and NSF-funded research project at Cornell
• (Carl Lagoze and Sandy Payette)
• Reference implementation developed at Cornell
• First Application (1999-2001)
• University of Virginia digital library prototype
• (Thorny Staples and Ross Wayland)
• 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
• www.fedora.info

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Fedora 1.x

• Architecture
• Software
• Release 1.2 Features
• Demo Use Cases

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Digital Object Model Architectural View
Globally unique persistent id
Persistent ID (
PID
)
Public view access methods for obtaining
disseminations of digital object content
Disseminators
Internal view metadata necessary to manage the
object
System
Metadata
Datastreams
Protected view content that makes up the
basis of the object
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Digital Object Model Example Disseminators

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

Persistent ID (
PID
)
Disseminators
Default
Simple Image

• Get Thumbnail
• Get Medium
• Get High
• Get VeryHigh

System
Metadata
Datastreams
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Object Behavior Contracts
Behavior Definition Object
behavior subscription
Data Object
behavior contract
data contract
Web Service
Behavior Mechanism Object
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DEMO Basic Use Cases

• Image (multiple datastreams)
• Image (Mr. SID)
• EAD (Rita Mae Brown papers)
• Text conversion (TEI to PDF)
• Basic Search

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Users access data objects through behaviors (or
disseminations).

• Dynamic
• data

Application
services
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Managers have direct access to each component of
a data object.
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Fedora and Web Services

• Fedora Repository system is a web service
• Access/Search (API-A) and Management (API-M)
• Service descriptions published using WSDL
• Both SOAP and HTTP bindings
• Back-end services
• Digital object behaviors implemented as linkages
  to other distributed web services
• Service binding metadata (WSDL) stored in special
  Fedora Behavior Mechanism objects.
• Fedora acts as mediator to these services.

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Fedora Repository SystemClient and Web Service
Interactions
Backend
Frontend
Fedora Repository System
Content Transform Service
client application
client application
user
Service
Web Service
Web Service Dispatch
Content Transform Service
web browser
user
Service
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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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Fedora Repository System
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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 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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DEMO Basic Use Cases

• Image (multiple datastreams)
• Image (Mr. SID)
• EAD (Rita Mae Brown papers)
• Text conversion (TEI to PDF)
• Basic Search

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Projects using Fedora

• University of Virginia digital library (images,
  EAD, e-texts)
• Tufts University educational (VUE/concept maps)
  digital library
• 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)
• Yale University Electronic Records Archive
• New York University Humanities Computing Group

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Fedora Downloads since May 2003

• Total downloads gt1500
• 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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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