Re: [Server-devel] Fwd: Simple Digital Library Index System
On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:00 AM, Mike Dawsonmikeofmanches...@gmail.com wrote: The way it's designed is that the Java program just runs once to generate the indexes. (...) This can then be served by bare apache. right! That's exactly what I was hoping to hear, and quite exceptional too. Most projects lose sight of the value in serving indexes and files statically. So this is all quite intriguing for me now. Let me know about that demo site, I am definitely keen on seeing this in action. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Fwd: Simple Digital Library Index System
Hi Martin, Apologies for the delay in getting back to you... I just did the training for this for our team here on the ground yesterday. So they will probably have the first library built early next week (about Monday). Then we can upload that as a demo. The way it's designed is that the Java program just runs once to generate the indexes. As mentioned it has two passes - one pass goes through the content in the folders, extracts the meta data that it can, and then puts a xml file with the same name next to the original file with Dublin Core Meta Data. The next pass uses XSL to transform this into XHTML pages for browsing. There is a final XSL pass that supports internationalization of the interface and applying a frame 'template'. This can then be served by bare apache. Using XSL it would also be quite easy to generate different views - so one view could be a XHTML based browsing index, the other could be more like repo indexes, etc. Also because we generate XHTML as well it can even just be copied by whatever means. Also of course we have just generated plain old static files, so any system can work for replication (rsync, ftp mirror, whatever). We are using Nutch to provide a search system though - this runs through Tomcat, which does indeed have some overhead. However one can put this through an apache using mod_cache and tweaking the expires time in accordance with the index frequency - that way if a teacher tells kids to search for a given item the search system won't be hit 50 times. Hope that answers some questions - we shall look forward to putting up the demo library asap. Regards, -Mike On 30/07/2009, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: This sounds interesting. It is something I was hoping to implement somehow, using IMS-CP (or similar) plus a repository scheme copied from the Debian apt repository format, or the yum repo format. Both repo formats are fantastic for this, very rsync, http and cache friendly, super-scalable and distributable, etc. The plan was (is?) to use the upcoming Moodle v2 repository plugins infra to build client and server sides, but with the protocol being just a trivial-looking repo format, any existing system can be a server. Unfortunately Moodle v2 will take a long time to be ready. (I've reviewed GreenStone in the past, and worked with Fedora - the _other_ one - , eprints and a few other ones. I was not impressed with any of them.) Not sure how this project is designed and implemented. If it does something like the above, fantastic. It'd mean that the software maintains the repo (which is served by bare apache), but does not need to be running permanently. The resident memory footprint of Java is a bit of a no-no for the XS. In any case, it might need client code for the Moodle side so that the content is easy to integrate into the topic of the day and learning narratives... cheers, m On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 6:39 PM, Sameer Vermasve...@sfsu.edu wrote: -- Forwarded message -- From: Mike Dawson mikeofmanches...@gmail.com Date: Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 1:03 AM Subject: Simple Digital Library Index System To: de...@lists.laptop.org Dear All, In Afghanistan we wanted to have a system that would make it as simple as possible to make a relatively large, replicated digital library accessible locally on the school server (external bandwidth here is about 64kbps per school). In addition we wanted something that was very fast and easy to add content to (e.g. not having to type meta data again hundreds of times). We looked at Greenstone in particular - but that was relatively complex to setup and also would have been tricky to automate adding content to it / distributing it. Moodle is really designed more for class / learning management. The system that we have made is based on Java / XSL - it makes digital libraries a breeze, not requiring any kind of database etc on the server: I have made a wiki page at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/SimpleDigitalLibraryIndex I would be interested in using OLPC project hosting for this - I looked at the Contributor's program on the wiki. We have laptops here :) - just need project hosting. As per the status note in the wiki I do have a version now that more or less does the trick - quite a few things to tidy up and formats to add support for. As soon as possible I shall put up a demo version on our server (hopefully later this week). Regards, -Mike ___ Devel mailing list de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel How does this compare to the Moodle approach? Can't we do the same in Moodle although in the case of Moodle, one has to create courses and do so manually. Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
Re: [Server-devel] Fwd: Simple Digital Library Index System
This sounds interesting. It is something I was hoping to implement somehow, using IMS-CP (or similar) plus a repository scheme copied from the Debian apt repository format, or the yum repo format. Both repo formats are fantastic for this, very rsync, http and cache friendly, super-scalable and distributable, etc. The plan was (is?) to use the upcoming Moodle v2 repository plugins infra to build client and server sides, but with the protocol being just a trivial-looking repo format, any existing system can be a server. Unfortunately Moodle v2 will take a long time to be ready. (I've reviewed GreenStone in the past, and worked with Fedora - the _other_ one - , eprints and a few other ones. I was not impressed with any of them.) Not sure how this project is designed and implemented. If it does something like the above, fantastic. It'd mean that the software maintains the repo (which is served by bare apache), but does not need to be running permanently. The resident memory footprint of Java is a bit of a no-no for the XS. In any case, it might need client code for the Moodle side so that the content is easy to integrate into the topic of the day and learning narratives... cheers, m On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 6:39 PM, Sameer Vermasve...@sfsu.edu wrote: -- Forwarded message -- From: Mike Dawson mikeofmanches...@gmail.com Date: Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 1:03 AM Subject: Simple Digital Library Index System To: de...@lists.laptop.org Dear All, In Afghanistan we wanted to have a system that would make it as simple as possible to make a relatively large, replicated digital library accessible locally on the school server (external bandwidth here is about 64kbps per school). In addition we wanted something that was very fast and easy to add content to (e.g. not having to type meta data again hundreds of times). We looked at Greenstone in particular - but that was relatively complex to setup and also would have been tricky to automate adding content to it / distributing it. Moodle is really designed more for class / learning management. The system that we have made is based on Java / XSL - it makes digital libraries a breeze, not requiring any kind of database etc on the server: I have made a wiki page at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/SimpleDigitalLibraryIndex I would be interested in using OLPC project hosting for this - I looked at the Contributor's program on the wiki. We have laptops here :) - just need project hosting. As per the status note in the wiki I do have a version now that more or less does the trick - quite a few things to tidy up and formats to add support for. As soon as possible I shall put up a demo version on our server (hopefully later this week). Regards, -Mike ___ Devel mailing list de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel How does this compare to the Moodle approach? Can't we do the same in Moodle although in the case of Moodle, one has to create courses and do so manually. Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Fwd: Simple Digital Library Index System
-- Forwarded message -- From: Mike Dawson mikeofmanches...@gmail.com Date: Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 1:03 AM Subject: Simple Digital Library Index System To: de...@lists.laptop.org Dear All, In Afghanistan we wanted to have a system that would make it as simple as possible to make a relatively large, replicated digital library accessible locally on the school server (external bandwidth here is about 64kbps per school). In addition we wanted something that was very fast and easy to add content to (e.g. not having to type meta data again hundreds of times). We looked at Greenstone in particular - but that was relatively complex to setup and also would have been tricky to automate adding content to it / distributing it. Moodle is really designed more for class / learning management. The system that we have made is based on Java / XSL - it makes digital libraries a breeze, not requiring any kind of database etc on the server: I have made a wiki page at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/SimpleDigitalLibraryIndex I would be interested in using OLPC project hosting for this - I looked at the Contributor's program on the wiki. We have laptops here :) - just need project hosting. As per the status note in the wiki I do have a version now that more or less does the trick - quite a few things to tidy up and formats to add support for. As soon as possible I shall put up a demo version on our server (hopefully later this week). Regards, -Mike ___ Devel mailing list de...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel How does this compare to the Moodle approach? Can't we do the same in Moodle although in the case of Moodle, one has to create courses and do so manually. Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
