Fedora Commons Projects

Projects

Fedora Commons' software development has been divided into multiple projects, each producing core components or services. We are moving in a direction of Fedora Commons being the home for a set of inter-related open source software projects that produce components or software libraries that fit nicely into solution bundles or for integration into larger information systems. Software projects under the Fedora Commons umbrella must develop components or software libraries for use cases that are consistent with the Fedora Commons mission. Unlike Apache, which has many projects targeted at many different purposes, all Fedora Commons projects are synergistic and are intended to fit together. However, separate projects provide for better management and tracking. Fedora Commons uses software engineering methodologies and appropriate community governance mechanisms to help ensure that the components and libraries may be easily integrated. This is an evolving process as the organization and its software engineering methodologies matures.

Fedora Repository Project

This project is the traditional Fedora distribution which includes the Fedora Repository service and several closely related components and libraries. This software has proven to be an attractive open-source option for organizations building service-oriented platforms for scholarly communication, e-research, advanced digital libraries, and more. From the Web perspective, the Fedora repository service has been shown to be an effective underpinning for Web applications (including traditional Web applications, Web 2.0 style applications, and increasing Semantic Web style applications). Over time this project will be divided into smaller projects to improve integration options, simplify feature development and facilitate management flexibility. The Fedora Repository service is a core component of future Fedora Commons' software development. The new Fedora 3.0 is currently in Beta release with production scheduled for April 2008. The current production release is Version 2.2.1. Fedora 2 will be maintained at least through January 2009 since there are a considerable number of organizations that use Fedora 2 as the basis for their production systems. There are no new features planned for Fedora 2 and development will be confined to defect repairs.

Topaz Project

Based loosely on the ORM (Object to Relational Mapping) family of software, Topaz is a powerful object to triple persistence and query service. It has its own software codebase (http://gandalf.topazproject.org) and integrates with both the Fedora Repository service and the Mulgara RDF Database (semantic triple-store). Major re-usable software components of Topaz include the OTM - Object Triple Mapping and OQL - Object Query Language. The Topaz Project is working with the Fedora Repository Project on re-architecture efforts that benefit both projects and bring them closer together. One result of this work in the past 6 months is the new Akubra Project, described next.

Storage Delegation Project

The Storage Delegation Project is an overarching project for storage-related needs of open source content systems. It includes the Akubra Project as a subproject but is intended to support the wider scope of use cases found in the open source content community. A major part of this project is a collaboration between DSpace and Fedora Commons.

Mulgara Project

Mulgara (http://www.mulgara.org) is one of the premier RDF databases (semantic triple-stores) available in open-source and a key component of the Fedora Repository service and Topaz OTM. Fedora Commons has directly hired one of the lead architects of Mulgara to continue advancing the Mulgara to meeting the needs of Fedora Commons' projects. Fedora Commons and Topaz are hosting the Mulgara project resources (i.e., code repository, collaboration tools). Practical introduction of semantic technologies is important to realizing the full potential of the Fedora Commons mission and ensuring that a production-ready, supported RDF database (triple-store) is available as free, open-source software is a required component for many applications we support.

Fedora Middleware Project

This project is funded by a grant to Cornell University from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of this work is to provide an improved Fedora Repository service and to enable new service integrations in accordance with the principles of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). This work is motivated by use cases that suggest new models of scientific and scholarly communication. The Fedora Middleware Project will demonstrate reference integrations of middleware products provided in open source which are suitable for use in solutions that include services supplied by Fedora software. Middleware products for consideration and use include messaging products such as JMS providers, Enterprise Service Bus products, Choreography Engines, Business Rules Engines, Workflow/Business Process Execution Engines and Distributed Transaction Managers. No middleware products will be built as part of this project though a select group of best-of-breed integrations will be demonstrated. Both simple, lightweight approaches and enterprise-level approaches will be included as part the project. Also, approaches to management of business/mission semantics, message formats and governance issues will be considered.