Getting Started with Fedora

• The Fedora Basics
• Using the Fedora Repository Software
• Search and Discovery
• Tutorials
• Fedora-based Applications

The Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture is a conceptual framework that uses a set of abstractions about digital information to provide the basis for software systems that can manage digital information. It provides the basis for ensuring long-term durability of the information, while making it directly available to be used in a variety of ways. It is very important to understand that Fedora provides a foundation upon which to build a variety of information management schemes for different use cases, not a full solution for a specific use case. The Fedora software that DuraSpace distributes has been designed to provide many different possibilities for a large array of applications.

Fedora has a very active developer community, both contributing to the core software development process and developing complete applications on top of Fedora that address particular use cases or application areas. This guide is designed to give you a basic understanding of the Fedora architecture and the core repository management software, and to give you some general ideas about how to use it. Whether you want to look at adopting one of the existing Fedora-based solutions or develop you own, this general introduction should be useful to you. Anchorbasicsbasics

On this page:

The Fedora Basics

In a Fedora repository, all content is managed as data objects, each of which is composed of components ("datastreams") that contain either the content or metadata about it. Each datastream can be either managed directly by the repository or left in an external, web-accessible location to be delivered through the repository as needed. A data object can have any number of data and metadata components, mixing the managed and external datastreams in any pattern desired.

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• The Fedora Abstractions - A description of the essential abstractions defined by the Fedora architecture that are implemented in DuraSpace's Fedora software. (coming soon)
• An introduction to Fedora digital objects - A detailed description of the four types of Fedora objects and what they can do.
• An introduction to FOXML - The details about the XML encoding of Fedora objects.
• Relationships using RDF - A description of how Fedora can use the Resource Description Framework (RDF) to represent object relationships.
• Content modeling - A general introduction to using Fedora to manage different kinds of information. (coming soon)

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Using the Fedora Repository Software

We provide a test repository instance that starts up your own instance of Fedora in the cloud. You can use this to play with the web-based administrator client to get a feel for making objects and managing a repository. Note that the instance of Fedora that is started up for you will stay active for one hour, at which time it will be terminated, removing all objects that you have created.

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• Use our test repository- We provide instance of a Fedora repository running in the cloud that you can use without having to download and configure software.
• Installation and Configuration on your machine - This is the starting point for setting up a Fedora repository on your server, which includes a quick start option.
• The Fedora Web-based Administrator - You can use this to interactively create and update objects, as well as to administer your repository.
• Creating and Updating Data Objects - The complete guide to building objects.
• EZService - A quick start for creating service objects.
• The CMA Construction Guide - A detailed guide to creating content model and service objects
• Security

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Search and Discovery

The nature of an object-based repository, like Fedora, is to manage all information in the most modular manner, in a way that is as independent of any particular software as possible.There is no database that holds metadata fields. There are services, such as GSearch and PrOAI, that harvest content and metadata from objects in various ways for various purposes. The best practice for building access systems for a Fedora repository is to use such services to  build one or more indexes that are tailored to your needs.

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• Basic Search - The built-in search that is intended for repository managers use, not intended to be exposed externally.
• GSearch - The Generic Search Service that makes Fedora's features useful to different search engines.
• PrOAI - The OAI provider service that is designed to take advantage of Fedora's features.
• The RDF-based Resource Index - This is Fedora's built-in semantic store.

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Tutorials

• Tutorial 1: Introduction--Basic Concepts in Fedora
• Tutorial 2: Getting Started--Creating Fedora Objects and Using the Content Model Architecture
  (Note that files for example three can be found here.)

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Fedora-based Applications

Below is a list of applications that run on the current 3.x versions of Fedora (or will soon be available). For a more complete community software registry that includes applications that run on earlier generations of Fedora, or are other useful tools and utilities, see our Community Software Registry .

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