Enforcing Interoperability with the Open Archives Initiative

Repository Explorer

Hussein Suleman, hussein@vt.edu

Digital Library Research Laboratory

Virginia Tech

JCDL 2001 Slide 2

Overview of the OAI

What is the Open Archives Initiative?

What is the Metadata Harvesting Protocol?

What is an Open Archive?

History of the OAI

Development of the OAI Protocol

Brief description of the OAI Protocol

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Repository Explorer

Technical Testing Tool

Simulates use of an archive (aka a Repository) by a typical service provider

Allows browsing of an archive’s contents using only the OAI protocol (aka Exploring)

Checks syntax and encoding of data

Interactive and Non-interactive modes of testing

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Motivation

Chicken-and-egg problem with protocol

Lack of service providersNeed for “stub” routines

Ambiguity in interpretation of protocolNeed for validation of implementations

Data quality assurances

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Validation Procedure

HTTP – check for server errors

Schema – check for conformance to XML Schema Description

Parser – check for validity of XML structure and encoding

Protocol – check protocol-specific requirements

HTTPProtocol

Checker

XML

Parser

XML

Schema

Processor

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Interactive Browsing

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Parameter Testing

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Browsing

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Browsing

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Browsing

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Browsing

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Browsing

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Multiple views of data

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Multilingual Support

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Automatic Test Suite

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Error in Response

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Error in XML

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Conclusions and Future Work

Compliance testing is a critical part of protocol development and support in interoperability efforts

Support future versions of OAI protocol

Generalize to other protocols

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That’s All Folks !