Reengineering PhysNet in the uPortal framework

Abstract

A Digital Library (DL) is an electronic information storage system focused on meeting the information seeking needs of its constituents.

As modern DLs often stay in synchronization with the latest progress of technologies in all fields, interoperability among DLs is often hard to achieve. With the advent of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) and Open Digital Libraries (ODL), lightweight protocols show a promising future in promoting DL interoperability. Furthermore, DL is envisaged as a network of independent components working collaboratively through simple standardized protocols. Prior work with ODL shows the feasibility of building componentized DLs with techniques that are a precursor to web services designs.

In our study, we elaborate the feasibility to apply web services to DL design. DL services are modeled as a set of web services offering information dissemination through the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Additionally, a flexible DL user interface assembly framework is offered in order to build DLs with customizations and personalizations. Our hypothesis is proven and demonstrated in the PhysNet reengineering project.