1: This is a pilot release of the NSDL-LONCAPA Gateway.
2:
3: The goal
4: ========
5: Implement a metadata exchange of resources from
6: NSDL (http://www.smete.org) to LON-CAPA (http://www.lon-capa.org)
7: and vice versa.
8:
9: More information is in the doc/ directory.
10:
11: What's new
12: ==========
13: For a history of this software, you should work through
14: the CVS repository.
15:
16: export CVSROOT=:pserver:USERNAME@install.lon-capa.org:/home/cvs
17:
18: How to build and install
19: ========================
20:
21: cd nsdl/build
22: make build
23: make install
24:
25: System requirements
26: ===================
27: * Apache and mod_perl
28: * Graham Barr's TimeDate module (http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=TimeDate)
29: * XML::Xalan perl module (http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=XML-Xalan)
30:
31: To configure your machine, you will need to add the following
32: line to your /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file.
33:
34: Include conf/nsdl.conf
35:
36: (You will then need to restart your web server;
37: /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart)
38:
39: Issues
40: ======
41: This is a pilot effort. The goal was to enact a reasonable
42: solution and directly uncover difficult issues.
43:
44: Here are some of the remaining issues
45: * ISSUE: User authentication
46: PROBLEM: users are crossing domains, so browser-cookie validation can't work
47: SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS: should require a GPG public key and/or
48: servers should communicate to coordinate passing of user
49: and/or some kind of proxy or central verification system
50: * ISSUE: Imperfect metadata cross-walking
51: PROBLEM: There are a range of imperfect mappings between Dublin Core and
52: LON-CAPA metadata fields as well as between IEEE LOM and LON-CAPA
53: metadata fields.
54: SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS: Improve the LON-CAPA metadata that is collected and
55: place more importance on the exhaustive IEEE LOM
56: standard rather than the weaker Dublin Core standard.
57: In the future, to get to Dublin Core, it might make
58: sense to convert LON-CAPA to IEEE LOM and *then*
59: go to IEEE LOM metadata standard.
60: * ISSUE: Set hierarchies
61: PROBLEM: Asking for ListIdentifiers from LON-CAPA will return a really long
62: list that represents a "jumbled" repository. Currently,
63: ListIdentifiers, ListRecords, etc return error messages--
64: we do not yet support set hierarchy results.
65: SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS: authors should be able to nominate their records
66: for being part of a meaningful collection of academic
67: resources; thus multiple OAI-distributed metadata sets
68: would actually be contained within LON-CAPA
69: * ISSUE: Code thoroughness
70: PROBLEM: Limited time. I had limited time (100 hours) to enact a gateway.
71: SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS: Invest more time. The API and documentation
72: could be a better match for what is implemented
73: and vice versa.
74: * ISSUE: Making SMETE available to LON-CAPA
75: PROBLEM: Ummm... I thought SMETE supported OAI. The only interface I find
76: is enriched HTML forms.
77: SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS: SMETE should support OAI or some exporting of XML files
78: in Dublin Core or IEEE LOM or whatever they are using.
79:
80: Author
81: ======
82: Scott Harrison, 2002
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