OpenHandle: Google Code Project

Hi:

The OpenHandle project aims to exposes Handle [1] records in various common
serializations: RDF/XML, RDF/N3 and JSON. The demo service is very much a
work in progress and is located on one of our dev servers [2]. The project
is open source (GPL) and the code and project wiki are available on Google
Code [3].

For those who may not be familiar with Handle, the Handle System [4,5,6] is
a directory service which is used by a growing number of organizations and
projects  - DOI, ADL, DSpace, etc. - to provide identification and
resolution services on the Internet. The Handle System runs on its own
dedicated network protocol and the reference implementation is in Java.
Hence the driver for this effort to expose handle records as open
descriptions retrievable from a web service and accessible to multiple
languages.

The current release fixes some of the terminology and structures and aligns
better with RFC 3651 [5]. Specifically:

    1. Handle namespace URI is now dereferencable (returns an RDF schema -
still under development): <http://hdl.handle.net/10100/handle.rdfs#>
    2. Follows RFC 3651 more strictly
    3. Handle value fields are now respected
    4. Native handle types (per the RFC) are represented as RDF classes
    5. Querystring parameters added:

        a) id - handle
        b) index - select handle value index
        c) type - select handle value type
        d) format - select format ("rdf", "n3", "json")
        e) mimetype - override mimetype

Additionally the service now offers multiple representations:

    1. RDF/XML
    2. RDF/N3
    3. JSON

These are accessible using the key/val pairs: "format=rdf", "format=n3",
"format=json". They are served up with the correct mimetypes:

    1. application/rdf+xml
    2. text/rdf+n3
    3. application/json

This may not result in the best presentation in the browser, in which case
an override "mimetype" parameter is provided so that the formats can be
returned with a user-specified mimetype, e.g. "mimetype=application/xml" for
RDF/XML, or "mimetype=text/plain" for RDF/N3 and JSON.

Note, as yet the queries do not support HTTP content negotiation but this is
being addressed.

The webapp code is available as an open source project on Google Code [3]
under the GPL licence. The site makes the following resources available:

    1. OpenHandle webapp code in subversion
    2. Handle RDF schema, war file and source jar downloads
    3. Wiki for project development

We'd be very interested in receiving feedback on this project - either on
the list or on the project wiki.

Cheers,

Tony


[1] http://www.handle.net/
[2] http://nascent.nature.com/openhandle/handle?
[3] http://code.google.com/p/openhandle/
[4] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3150.txt
[5] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3151.txt
[6] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3152.txt


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Received on Friday, 7 March 2008 16:28:31 UTC