ARDC (ANDS) Vocabulary Services Registry

This is the repository for the ARDC Vocabulary Registry. See also the repositories for the corresponding Portal, Linked Data API, and the documentation repository.

What the Registry does

The Registry implements a vocabulary metadata catalogue and repository, and provides an API for a vocabulary portal and for machine-to-machine clients.

Installation

Please refer to INSTALL.md for detailed installation instructions.

Tomcat deployment

The Registry should be deployed in Tomcat. (Deployment to other containers may be possible; it has not been tested.)

Registry functionality

The Registry combines the functions of a metadata catalogue and a repository. The repository functions were previously undertaken by a project known as the Vocabulary Toolkit; those functions are now fully integrated into this Registry.

Repository functionality

This is an overview of the repository functions:

• Get project metadata from PoolParty
• Harvest
  • PoolParty
  • Sesame
  • SPARQL endpoint
  • File
• Transform
  • Extract a list of SKOS concepts in JSON format
  • Create a tree of SKOS concepts in JSON format to support a browse visualisation
• Import
  • Upload RDF data into a Sesame repository
• Publish
  • Create a configuration file for use with the Elda library
• Unpublish
• Unimport
• Unharvest
• Backup
  • Download project exports from PoolParty

Registry API

The API is accessed via HTTP(S).

Technology

This section provides some background information on the technology used to implement the Registry.

Java

The Registry has been developed using Java 8, and a Java 8 Runtime Environment is required. Specifically, the code uses lambda expressions.

JPA and Hibernate

The Registry uses JPA for database access. Hibernate is used as the implementation provider for JPA. The JPA layer provides database independence. Nevertheless, because ARDC software has for a long time used MySQL, the MySQL JDBC driver is included, and the software has only been tested using MySQL.

JAX-RS and Jersey

The HTTP-based API is implemented as a set of restlets using JAX-RS. Strictly speaking, the interface is not RESTful. Jersey is used as the implementation provider for JAX-RS.

Sesame

The OpenRDF Sesame libraries are used extensively to implement the Registry features.

Apache Commons

The Registry uses Apache Commons components. Currently, Configuration, IO, and Lang (both versions 2 and 3) are used. (Commons IO is required by Sesame, but it is also invoked directly from the Registry code.)

Swagger

The Registry exposes its API methods through Swagger (also known as Open API version 2). The default web.xml exposes the Swagger description of the API at the URL /swagger.json.

Licence

The Vocabulary Registry is licensed under the Apache License, version 2.0. See LICENSE for details.