This is the February 2016 edition of the Fedora Newsletter. This newsletter summarizes the most significant activities within the Fedora community over the last month.
Call for Action
Fedora is designed, built, used, and supported by the community. Here is an easy and important way that you can contribute to the effort:
- Add a comment to any of these tickets [1] if you are interested in inching into Fedora development.
Fedora 4.5.0 Release
The Fedora 4.5.0 release furthers several major objectives:
- Tighten the definition of the RESTful application programming interface (API)
- Further align this API to community standards, including the Linked Data Platform [2] (LDP) and Web Access Control [3] (WebAC)
- Enhance preservation capabilities and related documentation
- Improve tooling for external services in the ecosystem around the repository
- Fix bugs
Release notes [4] and downloads [5] are available on the wiki.
Merger Between LYRASIS and DuraSpace
The Boards of LYRASIS and DuraSpace, two leading member-based non-profit organizations serving archives, libraries, museums, as well as the broader scholarly, cultural heritage and technology communities, have unanimously approved an “Intent to Merge”. LYRASIS, which serves more than 4000 members and information professionals by delivering eResources, strategic licensing, training and digital technology resources and DuraSpace, a leader in the development and deployment of open source technologies and services that promote durable access and discovery of digital data, will begin next steps to determine the feasibility of a combined organization. These next steps will include a deeper assessment of the individual organizations and how they might partner effectively, seeking community feedback on the proposal and a more public phase of due diligence investigation. Read the full announcement [6] online.
Software development
Standards
Versioning with Memento
Memento [7] is a well-known and widely-supported specification for publishing versioned content on the Web. Fedora 4 provides a versioning service via API [8], and the technical team has agreed to move the versioning API to an implementation of Memento. This is directly in-line with our goal of adopting existing, well-established standards rather than creating our own. As first steps, we will be examining related work done in the Apache Marmotta [9] project, we will be in contact with the Memento community (particularly on the question of HTTP action for creating new versions) and of course, anyone in the community with an interest is invited to participate [10].
Support for Transactions
As we move towards creating specifications for Fedora’s HTTP API that would be independent of the current reference implementation, we are discussing the use cases and requirements for transactions [11]. Specifically, we want to know to what extent the relevant use cases require fully ACID [12] transactions, and whether or not transactions could become an optional feature of the API. If your institution has use cases for transactions, please add them to the Fedora wiki [13] and join the discussion on the mailing list [14].
Community-driven Features
API Extension Architecture
The API Extensions group has created an architecture diagram [15] to illustrate how the API Extension framework would work. At the last meeting [16] there was also a discussion on SSWAP [17] and its utility for the API-X effort.
If you are interested in the API Extension Architecture, please join the discussion on the fedora-community mailing list [18] and attend the next meeting on February 5.
Performance and Scalability
The Performance and Scale group met earlier in January [19] to discuss progress with JMeter testing [20]. More volunteers are needed to move this work forward, so please attend the next meeting [21] on February 8 to participate.
Conferences and events
Upcoming Events
Fedora Camp California
This West Coast Fedora Camp [22], hosted by the Caltech Library, will take place April 11-13 in Pasadena, CA. It is based on the inaugural Fedora Camp [23] that was held at Duke University in November. Training will begin with the basics and build toward more advanced concepts–no prior Fedora 4 experience is required. Participants can expect to come away with a deep dive Fedora 4 learning experience coupled with multiple opportunities for applying hands-on techniques working with experienced trainers and Fedora gurus. Spaces are limited so register now [24] to secure your place!
References
[1] https://jira.duraspace.org/issues/?filter=13121 [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/ldp/ [3] https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebAccessControl [4] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Fedora+4.5.0+Release+Notes [5] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Downloads [6] http://duraspace.org/node/2775 [7] http://mementoweb.org/ [8] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FEDORA4x/RESTful+HTTP+API#RESTfulHTTPAPI-Versioning [9] http://marmotta.apache.org/ [10] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Mailing+Lists+etc [11] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FEDORA4x/RESTful+HTTP+API#RESTfulHTTPAPI-Transactions [12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID [13] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Use+Cases [14] https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!searchin/fedora-tech/transactions/fedora-tech/LAsEn46N5N0/-Ept9REKAwAJ [15] https://wiki.duraspace.org/download/attachments/72550754/API-X_highlevel_arch.pdf?version=2&modificationDate=1453488362781&api=v2 [16] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2016-01-22+Fedora+API+Extensions+Meeting [17] http://sswap.info/ [18] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fedora-community [19] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2016-01-11+Performance+-+Scale+Meeting [20] https://github.com/fcrepo4-labs/fcrepo4-jmeter [21] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2016-02-08+Performance+-+Scale+Meeting [22] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/Events/Fedora+Camp+California+-+11-13+April+2016 [23] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/Events/Fedora+Camp+-+16-18+November+2015 [24] http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ec2u5a0m972b3620&llr=5iy95gcab
