Introduction to Fedora
Developers' Forum Integrated Access Council
March 29, 2005
Kevin L. Glick Electronic Records Archivist Manuscripts and Archives Yale University
Flexible
Extensible
Digital
Object
Repository Architecture
Kevin Glick Yale University
History of Fedora
1997-Present
DARPA and NSF-funded research project at Cornell (Conceptual framework developed by Sandra Payette and Carl Lagoze) Reference implementation developed at Cornell
1999-2001
University of Virginia digital library prototype (Thornton Staples and Ross Wayland)
2002-Present
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation granted Virginia and Cornell $1 million to develop a production-quality Fedora system Fedora 1.0 released in May 2003 as Open Source under the Mozilla public license – Fedora 2.1
Kevin Glick Yale University
One View of Fedora
Delivery Application
Ingest Tool
Ingest Tool
Search Tool Search Tool Access Tool
Delivery Application
FEDORA
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Fedora Digital Objects
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Fedora Digital Object Model
Internal Metadata: key metadata necessary to manage the object
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Types of Digital Objects
1. Data Objects 2. Behavior Definition Objects 3. Behavior Mechanism Objects
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Behaviors
Data Object
Persistent ID (PID) Persistent ID (PID) System Metadata Datastreams
Behavior Definition Object
Disseminators
System Metadata Datastreams
Service Definition Metadata (WSDL)
Persistent ID (PID) System Metadata
Behavior Mechanism Object
Datastreams
Service Binding Metadata (WSDL)
External Service
Digital Object Example
PID = uva-lib:100 Default Views Image Views Metadata Views Image (mrsid)
Get Profile List Items/Get Item List Methods Get OAI_DC
Multiple Disseminations
Get Thumbnail Get Medium Get High
DC (xml)
Thumbnail (jpeg) System Metadata
Get MARC Get DC
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Digital Object Storage
4 Properties for Datastreams
Datastream (Managed)
Fedora stores and manages the content bytestream
Datastream (External)
Fedora stores a reference (URL) to the content
Datastream (Redirect)
Fedora stores a reference (URL) to the content, but will not mediate access to content.
Datastream (XML)
Fedora stores a name-spaced block of XML content within the Fedora digital object XML file.
Kevin Glick Yale University
Repository System Architecture and Software
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Fedora Service Framework
Services
OAI Provider Service
Other Service
JHOVE
Fedora Repository Service
Preservation Integrity Service GDFR
Dynamic Disseminator Service
Fedora Search Service
Basic Workflow Service
Directory Ingest Service
External Workflow
Apps
Dialog Box Name
Text: Text Text Text Text Text Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here
Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here Sample Text Here
OK Cancel Help
Administrator PolicyBuilder
Fedora-Web-IR
Web-based submission and basic workflow
Kevin Glick Yale University
Fedora Server Design: 3 Layers
1. Interface
• Web Service for Access/Search • Web Service for Management • OAI Provider Implements all functionality in terms of the Fedora digital object model. • RDBMS
– Object “cache” for performance – Digital object registry
2. Core Subsystem
3. Storage
• XML object serializations
– Authoritative object with versioning – All management operations on XML
Fedora™ Repository
Kevin Glick Yale University
Fedora Repository System
Client and Web Service Interactions
Front-end
client application client application
Back-end
Web Service Dispatch
user
Web Service
Fedora Repository
web browser
Service
Service
Content Transform Service
user
Content Transform Service
Kevin Glick Yale University
What’s Different about Fedora
Supports complex objects, not document centric Developer-focused versus user-focused Requires Development resources Metadata and the content treated the same way
Supports any metadata schema (standard or nonstandard)
Import/Export Utility Designed for federation
Kevin Glick Yale University