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- Less redundancy between DSpace & Fedora code and development.
- Ability to combine development work/projects – a larger pool of developers working on common technologies.
- DSpace will also be able to take advantage of features offered by Fedora (which are not available in DSpace). Some examples may include:
- File versioning feature of Fedora, which DSpace could utilize to support versioning of DSpace Objects.
- More flexible architecture, which may allow DSpace to eventually support hierarchies other than "Community -> Collection -> Item"
- Flexible relationships model, which may allow for better defined relationships between DSpace Objects (e.g. linking together all articles within a Journal Issue, or all Issues within a Journal)
Will I still be able to use DSpace without Fedora?
Initially, the plan is that Fedora will be one of several storage layer options available. So, we anticipate that other storage options will still exist, and you could utilize DSpace without requiring that you use Fedora. Likely, in the future, Fedora will become the default storage layer.
Whether all storage layers support the same features is another question. It may be possible that only certain storage layers will be able to support certain features (like file versioning).
How is this work being supported?
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How can I help? How do I volunteer?
The best way to help out is to volunteer to lead or help with one (or more) of the development projects listed under the What are the Plans for Integrating the DSpace Application with the Fedora Repository Platform.
As you can tell, several initiatives have already gotten underway. If you want to help out with one of the existing initiatives, contact the person(s) in charge or send an email to dspace-devel listserv. If you'd like to lead a new initiative (which hasn't yet started), please announce your initiative on dspace-devel listserv so that we can send other volunteers your way!
At this time, we are mostly looking for volunteer developers/architects. As the initiative gets further along, we will put additional calls out for volunteer testers, etc.
Once this work is complete, how hard will the upgrade be for current DSpace users?
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How much expertise will I need to perform this upgrade?
At this time, we don't know the complete answer. Our intention is the make this upgrade as easy as possible and come up with find common solutions that everyone in the community to can utilize.
One of these common tools we are currently working on is is the aforementioned AIP Backup/Restore work. This tool will provide you with a way to export all your DSpace contents (Communities/Collections/Items) into a series of AIPs (Archival Information Packages), and import or restore them to any DSpace instance. It's possible that this tool could be used to ease the migration of your DSpace contents from the current DSpace data model into a Fedora-based data model.
We hope to build other common tools that will allow everyone to easily upgrade their DSpace when the time comes.
Will I also need to learn how to install/upgrade Fedora in order to install/upgrade DSpace?
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