BRICKS (software)
Encyclopedia
BRICKS is an open-source software framework for the management of distributed digital assets.
BRICKS has been deployed on a number of cultural institutions under the umbrella of the BRICKS Cultural Heritage Network, a community of cultural heritage, scientific and industrial organizations across Europe. The software itself is shared under the GNU Lesser General Public License
(LGPL).
funding will end in June 2007. The BRICKS Consortium announced in February 2007 the launch of a BRICKS Developer Community to host BRICKS development and documentation activities beyond the EC project lifespan.
Every BNode knows directly only a subset of other BNodes in the system. However, if a BNode wants to reach another member that is directly unknown to it, it will forward a request to some of its known neighbour BNodes that will deliver the request to the final destination or forward it again. BRICKS users access the system only through a local BNode available at their institution. Hence every user request is primarily sent to the institution's BNode and then the request is routed via other BNodes to the final destination.
Search requests behave like that; the BNode pre-selects a list of BNodes where a search request can be fulfilled, and then the BNode routes it there. When the location of the content is known, e.g. as a result of the query, the BNode is directly contacted.
documents and registered with a UDDI compatible repository used also for discovering appropriate services.
Since the BNode architecture is service-based, a BNode installation can be spread on more than one machine at the installation site. In such cases fundamental Bricks are needed on every machine that is part of the local installation, and core and basic Bricks can be present only on some machines. As their name suggests, core Bricks provide core system functionalities to users, i.e. a minimal set of services that enables users to use the system. On the other side, basic Bricks are optional and they must not be present on every installation site.
BNode, i.e. all installed services, run within a Web-service framework (embedding, among others Apache Axis
) that provides a standard set of functionalities: service deployment/undeployment, service invocation, and parameters serialisation/deserialisation.
The BNode software is mainly written in Java and JSP, using an embedded version of Apache Tomcat application Server. The BNode services re-use a large number of open-source libraries and frameworks including: Jena
, Apache Axis
, Apache Lucene, Apache Jackrabbit
, Apache Ant
, JUnit
, HSQLDB
.
The BNode exposes all of its services through a SOAP
web-service API. A Java Server Pages web-based GUI is provided for the administrative tasks including configuration of the network settings, security, and user management.
Users interact with a BNode through the BRICKS Pillar applications, described in the next section.
The BRICKS Desktop is an Eclipse-RCP application providing a more advanced access to the BNode services. It features a fully configurable user application framework allowing advanced metadata editing, ontology browsing, extensive searching, and interactive content creation.
Many other applications based on the BRICKS platform exist, including specific applications for the Cultural Heritage sector. The EMYA (European Museum of the Year) application, for example allows the management of an award for museum institutions across Europe, belonging to the European Museum Forum association.
paradigm is also reflected in the Annotation Tool which enables curators as well as visitors to create annotations on content. Annotating content helps to identify parts of content as well as employing a group of interest about the topic.
, the British Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, and the Russian Culture Heritage Network to name a few. By installing a Bnode and joining this network, even smaller cultural institutions and other digital content providers may contribute to the building of an unprecedented shared digital memory spanning over Europe and beyond.
Other DLMS: Digital Library Management Systems
BRICKS has been deployed on a number of cultural institutions under the umbrella of the BRICKS Cultural Heritage Network, a community of cultural heritage, scientific and industrial organizations across Europe. The software itself is shared under the GNU Lesser General Public License
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
(LGPL).
History
The BRICKS project released the first prototype of its software framework (v0.1) in December 2005. In February 2007, the third prototype release was made available. The next release is planned in July 2007. The BRICKS project work is partly funded by a research grant from the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme under the Information Society Technologies priority, action line “Technology. Enhanced Learning and Access to Cultural heritage.” The BRICKS Consortium invested an overall 12.2 million Euros in the project, including funding from the European Commission and consortium partners. The European CommissionEuropean Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
funding will end in June 2007. The BRICKS Consortium announced in February 2007 the launch of a BRICKS Developer Community to host BRICKS development and documentation activities beyond the EC project lifespan.
The BRICKS consortium
The BRICKS project consortium includes 22 partners from 9 different European countries. The project is led by Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SpA, an Italian ICT company, while the scientific and technical lead is Fraunhofer IPSI from Germany.List of consortium partners
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SpA Fraunhofer IPSI Metaware SpA Austrian Research Centers GmbH - ARC Consiglio Nazionale delle RicercheUniversity of Sheffield University of Athens Consorzio Forma Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)University of Florence - MICC Canoo Studio Azzurro Sistemi informativi Srl Liberologico PolyDisplay Museum of Cycladic Art (MCA) Österreichische Nationalbibliothek European Museum Forum Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici e il Paesaggio e per il Patrimonio Storico Artistico e Demoetnoantropologico di Firenze, Pistoia e Prato: Galleria degli Uffizi Archivum Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum Russian Cultural Heritage Network (RCHN) Italian Ministry of Culture Museums, Libraries and Archives CouncilBRICKS software
The BRICKS network infrastructure uses the Internet as a backbone, and is made of decentralized BRICKS Nodes (BNode), in order to avoid central points whose failure or overload could stop or slowdown the whole Network. BNodes communicate among each other and use available resources for content and metadata management.Every BNode knows directly only a subset of other BNodes in the system. However, if a BNode wants to reach another member that is directly unknown to it, it will forward a request to some of its known neighbour BNodes that will deliver the request to the final destination or forward it again. BRICKS users access the system only through a local BNode available at their institution. Hence every user request is primarily sent to the institution's BNode and then the request is routed via other BNodes to the final destination.
Search requests behave like that; the BNode pre-selects a list of BNodes where a search request can be fulfilled, and then the BNode routes it there. When the location of the content is known, e.g. as a result of the query, the BNode is directly contacted.
BNode
A BNode could be seen as a set of services that are required to manage an institution's presence in the system, and to provide services for the rest of the community. A BNode consists of three types of components: fundamental, core, and basic Bricks. Most of them are standard Web services, described by WSDLWeb Services Description Language
The Web Services Description Language is an XML-based language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a Web service. A WSDL description of a web service provides a machine-readable description of how the service can be called, what parameters it expects and what data structures...
documents and registered with a UDDI compatible repository used also for discovering appropriate services.
Since the BNode architecture is service-based, a BNode installation can be spread on more than one machine at the installation site. In such cases fundamental Bricks are needed on every machine that is part of the local installation, and core and basic Bricks can be present only on some machines. As their name suggests, core Bricks provide core system functionalities to users, i.e. a minimal set of services that enables users to use the system. On the other side, basic Bricks are optional and they must not be present on every installation site.
BNode, i.e. all installed services, run within a Web-service framework (embedding, among others Apache Axis
Apache Axis
Apache Axis is an open source, XML based Web service framework. It consists of a Java and a C++ implementation of the SOAP server, and various utilities and APIs for generating and deploying Web service applications. Using Apache Axis, developers can create interoperable, distributed computing...
) that provides a standard set of functionalities: service deployment/undeployment, service invocation, and parameters serialisation/deserialisation.
The BNode software is mainly written in Java and JSP, using an embedded version of Apache Tomcat application Server. The BNode services re-use a large number of open-source libraries and frameworks including: Jena
Jena
Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...
, Apache Axis
Apache Axis
Apache Axis is an open source, XML based Web service framework. It consists of a Java and a C++ implementation of the SOAP server, and various utilities and APIs for generating and deploying Web service applications. Using Apache Axis, developers can create interoperable, distributed computing...
, Apache Lucene, Apache Jackrabbit
Apache Jackrabbit
Apache Jackrabbit is an open source content repository for the Java platform. The Jackrabbit project was started on August 28, 2004, when Day Software licensed an initial implementation of the Java Content Repository API . Jackrabbit was also used as the reference implementation of JSR-170,...
, Apache Ant
Apache Ant
Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is similar to Make but is implemented using the Java language, requires the Java platform, and is best suited to building Java projects....
, JUnit
JUnit
JUnit is a unit testing framework for the Java programming language. JUnit has been important in the development of test-driven development, and is one of a family of unit testing frameworks collectively known as xUnit that originated with SUnit....
, HSQLDB
HSQLDB
HSQLDB is a relational database management system written in Java. It has a JDBC driver and supports a large subset of SQL-92 and SQL:2008 standards. It offers a fast, small database engine which offers both in-memory and disk-based tables...
.
The BNode exposes all of its services through a SOAP
SOAP
SOAP, originally defined as Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks...
web-service API. A Java Server Pages web-based GUI is provided for the administrative tasks including configuration of the network settings, security, and user management.
Users interact with a BNode through the BRICKS Pillar applications, described in the next section.
BRICKS applications
The BRICKS Workspace is a Java Server Pages web application based on the Struts framework. It offers a view of the BRICKS Network, allowing to search and browse available collections of digital objects, group objects into logical collections, annotate objects, manage, and import them. BRICKS Workspace must be installed along the BNode software.The BRICKS Desktop is an Eclipse-RCP application providing a more advanced access to the BNode services. It features a fully configurable user application framework allowing advanced metadata editing, ontology browsing, extensive searching, and interactive content creation.
Many other applications based on the BRICKS platform exist, including specific applications for the Cultural Heritage sector. The EMYA (European Museum of the Year) application, for example allows the management of an award for museum institutions across Europe, belonging to the European Museum Forum association.
Finds Identifier
The Finds Identifier application helps members of the general public classify archaeological objects they find. The user is presented with a set of questions, like the material of the object, dimensions, etc. allowing the application to retrieve matching objects from reference collections and present an image of the objects and a description to the user so he/she can further narrow down the classification.Living Memory
The Living Memory application deals with the creation of a "living memory," where visitors of cultural exhibitions can create and exhibit their personal contributions by interacting with the cultural objects shown in an exposition or museum. Living Memory helps curators and visitors to interact with each other, by sharing their content and enabling both to participate and create exhibitions. This prosumerProsumer
Prosumer is a portmanteau formed by contracting either the word professional or less often, producer with the word consumer. For example, a prosumer grade digital camera is a "cross" between consumer grade and professional grade...
paradigm is also reflected in the Annotation Tool which enables curators as well as visitors to create annotations on content. Annotating content helps to identify parts of content as well as employing a group of interest about the topic.
BRICKS Cultural Heritage Network (BCHN)
The BRICKS Project has established a network among cultural institutions for the sharing of digital cultural resources. This network, called the BRICKS Cultural Heritage Network, connects some of the major providers of cultural digital content and prominent players in the field of Digital Libraries, such as: The European Library, the MICHAEL ProjectMICHAEL (webportal)
MICHAEL stands for Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe. This web portal offers access to digital collections from museums, libraries and archives in different European countries.-What kind of information can be found:...
, the British Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, and the Russian Culture Heritage Network to name a few. By installing a Bnode and joining this network, even smaller cultural institutions and other digital content providers may contribute to the building of an unprecedented shared digital memory spanning over Europe and beyond.
See also
- DSpaceDSpaceDSpace is an open source software package that provides the tools for management of digital assets, and is commonly used as the basis for an institutional repository. It supports a wide variety of data, including books, theses, 3D digital scans of objects, photographs, film, video, research data...
- Digital libraryDigital libraryA digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...
- The European Library
- European CommissionEuropean CommissionThe European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
- Information Society Technologies
- Sixth Framework Programme
External links
Official project websites:- BRICKS Community (brickscommunity.org)
- BRICKS Developer Community (dev.brickscommunity.org)
Other DLMS: Digital Library Management Systems
- OpenDlib
- DSpace
- The Fedora ProjectFedora (software)Fedora is a modular architecture built on the principle that interoperability and extensibility is best achieved by the integration of data, interfaces, and mechanisms as clearly defined modules...
- Greenstone3