GCube Web Specifications and Standards Compliance

This area collects the Standard Specifications supported by the gCube system APIs, as part of the WP11 activities and towards meeting the integration and interoperability objectives for promoting the openness of the e-Infrastructure to other neighbouring and external ones. The collection focuses on the widely used, HTTP-based Specifications and generic interchange protocols (data/content standards, metadata standards, Web interface standards, security standards, data sharing protocols) that service both disseminating and consuming system's needs. This analysis is conducted per functional category and addresses the use, need and relevance of the standards that fall under each gCube functional area.

Specification label	Functional area	Direction	Adoption Status
OAI-PMH	Data Consumption	Producer	Completed

• Functional areas: Data Consumption / Data Production / Computation Consumption / Infrastructure Management

• Direction: Producer / Consumer

• Adoption Status: Completed / On going / Planned

OAI-PMH

Specification Description

The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a well-established standard in the content management and library science worlds that is gaining in importance. It provides a low-barrier mechanism for repository interoperability and defines the following parties and software components:

• Data Providers are repositories that expose structured metadata via OAI-PMH. A 'Data Provider' such as an academic library runs a Repository that supports OAI-PMH as a means of exposing metadata information about resources, for instance academic publications.
• Service Providers then make OAI-PMH service requests to harvest that metadata. A 'Service Provider' uses Harvester software to harvest metadata from Data Providers. The harvested metadata can then be used to provide valued-added services, such as a website that allows browsing and searching through their catalog.

OAI-PMH is a set of six verbs or services that are invoked within HTTP. An implementation of OAI-PMH must support representing metadata in Dublin Core, but may also support additional representations.

gCube Use/Need/Relevance

Through OAI-PMH protocol, gCube infrastructure acts as a 'Data Provider' and disseminates the hosted metadata records in a standard fashion, thus allowing for interoperation with other data e-Infrastructures that run autonomously. Other infrasturctures can harvest the metadata descriptions of gCube content in archives so that their services can exploit the collections. The protocol provides an application-independent interoperability framework for metadata exchange between the online parties.

Direction

• Producer

gCube Adoption Status

The protocol has already been integrated in the gCube system, from the 'Data Provider' perspective. The description of the adopted methodology towards the integration is described here.

Related gCube components

• aslHttp OAI_PMH: the http front end for the protocol
• applicationSupportLayer_OAI_PMH: business logic back-end component for the protocol

Protocol XX

Specification Description

Description and useful information about the Specification.

gCube Use/Need/Relevance

Describe the use/need/relevance of the specification in respect to the functional area of the system.

Direction

The direction towards the system (Producer/consumer), along with any information to clarify the perspective of the interpretation as one or the other or both, if needed

gCube Adoption Status

Information about status of adoption of Specification within Our system. Whether the specification has already been integrated and supported within the system, or it is under implementation, or soon to be implemented.

Components affected / relevant

• component X: role