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LynCode potential contributions to DSpace

We have several developments to DSpace such as:

  • Statistics module (improved from dspace-stats, with live statistics) - finishing
  • Administration Tools (making some administration tasks (very) simple) - don't have documentation yet
  • Auto-deploy mechanism (allows to add add-ons at runtime) - under development
  • Several web interface improvements

I would like to discuss with you several things, mainly:

  • The event model of DSpace (could be improved)
  • The new auto-deploy mechanism. I think it will improve a lot the administration experience, but not only, it would encourage developer community to make their own add-ons.
  • A new web interface (based on struts)

We have a manual (for the OAI) but i'm sending you a little bit of it (the intro):

X-OAI Manual: Introduction

What is X-OAI?

X-OAI is a java implementation of an adaptable OAI-PMH data provider interface.

Why X-OAI?

Projects like OpenAIRE2, Driver3 and EUBrazilOpenBio4 have specific metadata requirements (to the published content through the OAI- PMH interface). As the OAI-PMH protocol doesn't establish any frame to this specifics, X-OAI can, in a simple way, have more than one instance of an OAI interface, so one could define an interface for each project. That is the main purpose, although, X-OAI allows much more than that.

Concepts

To understand how X-OAI works, one must understand the concept of Filter, Transformer and Context. With a Filter it is possible to select information from the data source. A Transformer allows one to make some changes in the metadata before showing it in the OAI interface. X-OAI also adds a new concept to the OAI-PMH basic specification, the concept of context. A context is identified in the URL:

http://www.example.com/x-oai/<context>

Contexts could be seen as virtual distinct OAI interfaces, so with this one could have things like:

http://www.example.com/x-oai/driver
http://www.example.com/x-oai/openaire
http://www.example.com/x-oai/request

With this ingredients it is possible to built a robust solution that fulfill all requirements in Driver, OpenAIRE and also other projects specific requirements. With contexts one could select a subset of all available items in the data source. So when entering the OpenAIRE context, all OAI-PMH request will be restricted to that subset of items.

At this stage, contexts could be seen as sets (also defined in the basic OAI-PMH protocol). The magic of X-OAI happens when one need specific metadata format to be shown in each context. Metadata requirements by Driver slightly differs from the OpenAIRE ones. So for
each context one must define it's specific transformer. So, contexts could be seen as an extension to the concept of sets.

X-OAI has a specific implementation to DSpace.

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