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The BTE is a Java framework developed by the Hellenic National Documentation Centre (EKT, www.ekt.gr) and consists of programmatic APIs for filtering and modifying records that are retrieved from various types of data sources (eg. databases, files, legacy data sources) as well as for outputing them in appropriate standards formats (eg. database files, txt, xml, Excel). The framework includes independent abstract modules that are executed seperately, offering in many cases alternative choices to the user depending of the input data set, the transformation workflow that needs to be executed and the output format that needs to be generated. 

The basic idea behind the BTE is a standard workflow that consists of three steps, the data loading step, the processing step (record filtering and modification) and the output generation. Data The data loader provides the system with a set of Records (a list of key/value pairs - value is actually a list of Java Objects), the processing steps is responsible for filtering or modifying these records and the output generator outputs them in the appropriate format.

Standard The standard BTE version comes with predefined Data Loaders as well as Output Generators for basic bibliographic formats. However, Spring Dependency Injection can be utilized in order to load custom data loaders, filters, modifiers and output generators. 

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Keep in mind that the value of option "-e" must be a valid email of a DSpace user and value of option "-c" must be the collection handle the items will be imported to.

BTE Configuration

Since , DSpace administrators may have incorporated their own metadata scheme within DSpace (apart from default Dublin Core), someone may need to configure BTE to match their custom schemes.

BTE configuration file is located in path: [dspace]/config/spring/api/bte.xml and it's a Spring XML configuration file that consists of beans. (If these terms are unknown to you, please refer to Spring Dependency Injection web site for more information) 

Explanation of beans:

beambean id="gr.ekt.transformationengine.core.TransformationEngine"

This bean is instantiated when the import takes place. It deploys a new  BTE transformation engine that will do the transformation from one format to the other. It needs to two input arguments, the workflow (the processing step mentioned before) and the output generator.

bean id="org.dspace.app.itemimport.DataLoaderService"

Within this bean we declare all the possible data loaders that we need to support. Keep in mind that for each data loader we specify a key value that can be used as the value of option "-i" in the import script that we mentioned earlier.

bean id="conjunctionTransformationWorkflow"

This bean describes the processing steps. Currently there are no processing steps meaning that all records loaded by the data loader will pass to the output generator, unfiltered and unmodified. (See next section "Case studies" for info about how to add a filter or a modifier)

bean id="outputGenerator"

This bean declares the output generator, that in this case the default DSpace output generator is used. As anyone can see, the input properties for this bean is the configuration of metadata scemes schemas that are used in the DSpace repository. This is the place where someone can configure how the input data map to the metadata schema of DSpace. The references maps are actually key/value pairs where the key is the record key mentioned earlier and the value is the metadata element (schema, element, qualifier) that this key will map to.
By default, the data loaders provided with the BTE use as record keys the values that are specified in the input data file. For example, in the case of a bibtex input:
 
================
@article{small,
author = {Freely, I.P.},
title = {A small paper},
journal = {The journal of small papers},
year = 1997,
volume = {-1},
note = {to appear},
}
================
 
the record keys will be "author", "title", "journal", "year" and so on.
 
In the case of a RIS format input file:
 
================
TY  - JOUR
AU  - Shannon,Claude E.
PY  - 1948/07//
TI  - A Mathematical Theory of Communication
JO  - Bell System Technical Journal
SP  - 379
EP  - 423
VL  - 27
ER  -
=================
 
the record keys will be "TY", "AU" and so on.
 
Thus, depending on the value of "-i" option in import script, the user needs to change the configuration of this bean accordingly. 

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