» Initial Report of the Connecting with other Projects Working Group

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This document is an initial report of the working group, “Connecting with Other Project.”  The report is the work of multiple authors and a combination of research, personal knowledge, webcast interviews, conferences calls, etc.  Please see each individual project for the fullest, most complete and official position about each project.

The OLE Project is based on notions of community-source development and SOA design principles.  These principles convey support for open systems and the exchange of data to promote interoperability, especially between enterprise systems.  This document attempts to identify other projects and/or applications for which OLE Project might make specific connections.   While many of the projects/applications listed below are of interest to the OLE Project, this is not an exhaustive list of related projects.  Rather, these applications and projects are listed as examples.
The Working Group began its investigation with some uniform questions.  As our project evolved some of the questions changed.  But, below, are the initial questions that framed our investigation and report for soem of the projects below.
  1. Brief description of / link to the project/application
  2. What is the basic technical approach? (platform, standards, etc.)
  3. How might OLE interoperate with the project/application?
    • Scope and Timeframe of the project/application?
  4. What type of business process modeling (BPM) language and/or notation does the project use? (BPEL, JBPM, other)?
Technologies that we may want to discuss further:
  • Open Source ILS Projects
    • Evergreen – Evergreen is an open source integrated library system originally developed by the staff of the Georgia Public Library as the basis of the PINES consortium that serves over 270 libraries in the state.  The software embodies many characteristics of service orientation, using a framework called OpenSRF as the communications layer for transactions.  OpenSRF was created by the Evergreen developers based on the Jabber protocol for instant messaging and presence management.  Evergreen has been adopted by other libraries in the United States and Canada.  Evergreen primarily targets public libraries.  Work is underway to develop modules that will extend the system’s reach into academic libraries, such as course reserves, acquisitions, and  serials control.  The forthcoming Version 2 has been positioned as the “academic version” of Evergreen.Evergreen finds support from a commercial company called Equinox Software, founded by its original developers from GPLS.  The company has grown to include other staff members previously associated with vendors of proprietary automation products and from libraries.  The OLE Project will continue to study Evergreen as an example of a library automation environment recently architected and based on a services approach. Areas of interest will include data from any business process modeling that was conducted in the development of the system for pubic libraries that might be helpful as we consider workflows for national, research, and academic libraries.  Evergreen has been an important catalyst in developing interest among libraries for open source automation systems. OLE Project will explore what channels of communication will be effective to develop synergies with Evergreen, both with the community of libraries using the software and with the commercial company involved in its promotion, development, and support.
    • Koha -
      Koha is an open source integrated library system that has seen growing adoption in libraries over the last ten years.  In the last few years the product has seen more widespread adoption and has become one of the major competitors in the library automation industry.   Koha has been implemented by many different library types, including public, academic, school, museums, and others.  It has not been adopted by large research, academic, or national libraries. Koha was originally developed in New Zealand, but has received substantial development internationally, especially through sponsored development projects.

      Technology components comprising Koha include MySQL as the relational database for its operational modules, the Zebra storage and retrieval engine for its bibliographic content, Perl as the basis for its business logic, YAZ for Z39.50 support, Apache web server.

      Koha provides an attractive open source alternative to the proprietary closed source ILS products offered by the traditional vendors.  The system does not embrace a full service-oriented approach nor does it seem to be the result of business process modeling.

      OLE project will explore channels of communication with the community of libraries using Koha and with the LibLime as the commercial company leading its promotion, development, and support.

    • NewGenLib
      NewGenLibNewGenLib is an open source ILS created for libraries in the developing world.  The system was originally created as traditionally licensed, closed-source software through a collaboration between Kesavan Institute of Information and Knowledge Management (KIIKM) is a non-profit professional trust and Versus Solutions that performed the technical development.  Development of the software began in 2003, with the transition to open source announced in January 2003.

      The software was developed for libraries in the developing world, which may have very limited resources for hardware and local technical support. NewGenLib follows the traditional library automation model, offering modules for cataloging, acquisitions, serials control, circulation, and a Web-based online catalog.

      To date, NewGenLib has seen fairly limited adoption.  Kesavan indicates that about 122 libraries, primarily in India use the software.  It has not found use in North America or by large research libraries.

      NewGenLib follows was implemented through the Java family of technologies, including Java Swing for the client software. The system relies on the PostgreSQL database.

      The degree of service orientation of the software and the extent to which it emerged through business process modeling is limited given its original development as proprietary software.  The software primarily targets the functionally addressed by the traditional ILS with a focus on physical materials.

      As OLE Project enters more into the build phase, the NewGenLib software may provide some helpful resources since it has been constructed from components consistent with enterprise systems.

  • Other Higher Education and/or Cultural Institution Interfaces
  • Repositories
    • D-Space — DSpace is an open sources application used in preserving digital assets.  DSpace is often used as the basis for institutional repositories and other digital preservation projects.  The applicaton consists of tools for distribution, preservation, indexing of digital objects for long term preservation.The technology as described in wikipedia is written in Java and JSP, using the Java Servlet API. It uses a relational database, and supports the use ofPostgreSQL and Oracle. It makes its holdings available primarily via a web interface, but it also supports the OAI-PMH v2.0, and is capable of exportingMETS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) packages. Future versions are likely to see increasing use of web services, and changes to theuser interface layer.
    • EPrints – to engage folks in Europe
    • Fedora Commons –  Fedora, or Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture, is open source software used to enable long term digital preservation within a digital repository.  The application is described as modular and extensible.  With assistance from the Mellon Foundation, Fedora Commons  is attempting to provide new opportunities for enterprise level service integrations by adhering to the principles of service-oriented architecture.
  • SOA Principles & Governance
    • e-Framework The e-Framework advocates a service-oriented approach (soa) for looking at how information technology (IT) software infrastructure is developed. The primary goal of the e-Framework is to facilitate technical interoperability within and across education and research through improved strategic planning and implementation processes. The purpose of the e-Framework is to:
      • Provide a strategic approach to technical infrastructure development within and across domains
      • Provide a consistent technical vocabulary
      • Provide a focal point for interaction with software developers and those provided services to education and research
      • Act as a catalyst for the development of further specifications and standards

      A set of principles guides the development of the e-Framework:

      • A service oriented approach to system and process integration
      • Development, promotion and adoption of Open Standards
      • Community involvement in development of the e-Framework
      • Open collaborative development activities
      • Flexible and incremental deployment

      The e-Framework website will act as a knowledge base composed of:

      • a set of services and their descriptions
      • sets of service usage models (SUMs)
      • sets of guides, methodologies and analyses

      The e-Framework will provide a map of the areas of development against which specifications, standards, software tools, applications and services can be aligned.

    • Galaxy Mule Galaxy is an SOA governance platform with an integrated registry/repository. As an organization grows in the number of applications and services, integration becomes more complex, and the need for centralized governance and collaboration becomes critical. Galaxy can be used in a variety of ways including service contract management, service discovery, management of staged deployments, compliance policies for improved interoperability, and development collaboration support.
  • Web Scholarly Research Tools
    • Zotero – Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself.
    • Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) – * VUE is a tool to help people visualize, structure, and organize content coming from disparate sources (e.g. catalogs, repositories, etc).  The VUE client connects to collections and information that users are interested in using the OKI specifications.  Early progress with VUE resulted in plugins to connect VUE with repositories.  A library data center could write a piece of code to expose local data via a common services application (a VUE Plugin).  VUE’s array of OKI connections allow the client to support federated searching.
      All the tools are client based but the next round of funding will promote the development of a lighter weight, java/web-based application.  The web version will connect to zotero.  and both clients allow the end-user to interact in real time with the repository, get results in OKI specified manner, then display the results in a visually attractive VUE map or presentation.
      VUE Timeline/goals
      • Discuss and promote VUE;  figure out ways to support other projects
      • Since VUE is open source, find ways that other people can extend the application
      • Open VUE up to datasets whereby a data map can be created semi-automatically from an RSS or other feeds.  Treating datasets much like they VUE treats resources
      • Import data and then build a map; allow users to quickly generate a VUE

  • Enterprise SOA Middleware Projects
    • Kuali Rice
    • Fluid
    • JBOSS
    • Mule Mule is a lightweight Java-based messaging framework that enables exchange of data among applications. Mule uses a service-oriented architecture (SOA), enabling easy integration with existing systems. The Mule framework is highly scalable, allowing you to start small and connect more applications over time. Mule manages all the interactions between applications and components transparently, regardless of whether they exist in the same virtual machine or over the Internet, and regardless of the underlying transport protocol used.Mule is not a replacement for existing application frameworks. Instead, Mule leverages many open source projects such as Apache CXF, Spring, and ActiveMQ and fills a void in enterprise Java development where an application requires complex interactions with a variety of systems on a variety of platforms. Mule makes light work of wiring systems together in a robust, decoupled environment with little to no code and provides the necessary support to route, transport, and transform data to and from these systems.Mule is based on concepts from Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) architectures. The key advantage of an ESB is that it allows different applications to communicate with each other by acting as a transit system for carrying data between applications within an intranet or across the Internet. There are currently several commercial ESB implementations on the market. However, many of these provide limited functionality or are built on top of an existing application server or messaging server, locking institutions into that specific vendor. Mule is vendor-neutral, so different vendor implementations can plug in to it.
    • Shibboleth — The Shibboleth System is a standards based, open source software package for web single sign-on across or within organizational boundaries. It allows sites to make informed authorization decisions for individual access of protected online resources in a privacy-preserving manner. From Internet 2.
    • Grouper — Grouper was developed as an open source toolkit to address the needs of managing groups. Grouper is designed to function as the core element of a common infrastructure for managing group information across integrated applications and repositories. Grouper combines multiple sources of group information, both automated and manual, in managing memberships and other group information in a Groups Registry, a central information asset complementary to a site’s Person Registry.
    • Rules Engines

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