[Dev] New Virtual Collection Registry alpha release

[Twan Goosen]

BTW, for those of you wondering what a Virtual Collection (Registry) is 
and what it should do: a somewhat outdated but still largely relevant 
description can be found on this wiki page on the CLARIN Trac: 
<https://trac.clarin.eu/wiki/CmdiVirtualCollection>

Best,
Twan

On 13/07/14 11:05, Twan Goosen wrote:
> Dear CLARIN developers,
>
> For those who are interested: a new ALPHA release of the Virtual 
> Collection Registry (VCR) is available at 
> <http://catalog-clarin.esc.rzg.mpg.de/vcr> for your viewing, 
> experimenting and constructive criticising pleasure :) For the parts 
> that require authentication, I have created 20 test accounts with 
> usernames 'vcr-test1' to 'vcr-test20' and password 'vcr'. Take your 
> pick :)
>
> This version is a continuation of the work of Oliver Schonefeld of IDS 
> over the last couple of years. It adds some small but crucial 
> features, most importantly an endpoint for other web based tools to 
> submit to the VCR; furthermore there a quite a few improvements with 
> respect to stability and maintainability of the application.
>
> As a test case, I extended the non-production version of the VLO with 
> an option to submit search results to the VCR as a new collection. You 
> can test this yourself by going to 
> <http://catalog-clarin.esc.rzg.mpg.de/vlo/>, making a selection with 
> at most 1000 results and choosing the option "Create virtual 
> collection from search results" from the "Search Options" box. Doing 
> so will prompt you to log in to the VCR.
> This version of the VCR also fully supports Shibboleth (by means of 
> the SHHAA filter), but since this test server is not Shibbolised, this 
> cannot be demonstrated at this point.
>
> Some further changes:
> * The public interface of the VCR's REST service has been somewhat 
> refactored; up-to-date documentation is available[1].
> * Published collection now get a handle by means of the EPIC APIv2 
> (currently with a test prefix, persistence not guaranteed!).
> * You may also notice that the CMDI serialisations of the virtual 
> collections are now based on a new profile, which currently is not 
> public but can be inspected via the Component Registry's REST 
> interface [2]. I expect that it will be tweaked a bit before the 
> stable release.
>
> As can be seen in the overview of the VCR 1.0 Milestone[3], there are 
> still some remaining tasks before this version can go into production; 
> most importantly the addition of some administration facilities and 
> improved in-application documentation for the web front-end.
> The intention is not too add any additional features to this version 
> beyond those specified in this milestone. There is a plan[4] for 
> future versions. However, I am very much interested in your feedback 
> on the current alpha release. So please have a look and feel free to 
> send me your findings and other comments. I will be on vacation for 
> all of next week and most of the week after that, so I may not reply 
> until I get back.  If you encounter any urgent issues (e.g. server is 
> down) in the meantime, please contact Dieter about this.
>
> Have fun!
>
> Best regards,
> Twan
>
> [1] 
> https://svn.clarin.eu/VirtualCollectionRegistry/tags/VirtualCollectionRegistry-0.4.0-alpha/VirtualCollectionRegistry/Protocol.txt
> [2] 
> http://catalog.clarin.eu/ds/ComponentRegistry/rest/registry/profiles/clarin.eu:cr1:p_1404130561238/xml
> [3] https://trac.clarin.eu/milestone/VirtualCollectionRegistry-1.0
> [4] http://www.clarin.eu/content/virtual-collection-registry-workplan
>


-- 
Twan Goosen
CLARIN ERIC
www.clarin.eu | tel. +31 85 0091277 | skype: twan.goosen