Web Services and the JISC IE

UKOLN is supported by: Web Services and the JISC IE Andy Powell, UKOLN, University of Bath [email_address] JISC All Programmes Meeting, Brighton, 2004 www.bath.ac.uk a centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk

What are Web services? “ Automated resources accessed via the Internet . Web services are software-powered resources or functional components whose capabilities can be accessed at an internet URI. Standards-based web services use XML to interact with each other…” “ The term Web services describes a standardized way of integrating Web-based applications using the XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI open standards over an Internet protocol backbone. XML is used to tag the data, SOAP is used to transfer the data, WSDL is used for describing the services available and UDDI is used for listing what services are available. Used primarily as a means for businesses to communicate with each other and with clients, Web services allow organizations to communicate data without intimate knowledge of each other's IT systems …”

Agenda

Introduction, RDN, ePrints UK, ELF

Andy Powell

The Northern Ireland Integrated Managed Learning Environment (NIIMLE)

Greg McClure

GeoXwalk

Andrew Robson

Discussion

Web services - summary

machine (m2m) interfaces between functional components on the Web

underpin many e-commerce activities

a whole new set of acronyms – SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, WSRP

based on HTTP and XML (i.e. mainstream Web pedigree)

support both informational (e.g. search) and transactional (e.g. billing) types of service

Google and Amazon “Web APIs”…

JISC Information Environment JISC-funded content providers institutional content providers external content providers brokers aggregators catalogues indexes institutional portals subject portals learning management systems media-specific portals end-user desktop/browser presentation fusion provision OpenURL resolvers shared infrastructure authentication/authorisation (Athens) JISC IE service registry institutional preferences services terminology services user preferences services resolvers metadata schema registries

JISC IE and Web Services JISC-funded content providers institutional content providers external content providers brokers aggregators catalogues indexes institutional portals subject portals learning management systems media-specific portals end-user desktop/browser presentation fusion provision OpenURL resolvers shared infrastructure authentication/authorisation (Athens) JISC IE service registry institutional preferences services terminology services user preferences services resolvers metadata schema registries SRW (SOAP) SOAP

JISC Information Environment JISC-funded content providers institutional content providers external content providers brokers aggregators catalogues indexes institutional portals subject portals learning management systems media-specific portals end-user desktop/browser presentation fusion provision OpenURL resolvers shared infrastructure authentication/authorisation (Athens) JISC IE service registry institutional preferences services terminology services user preferences services resolvers metadata schema registries

Google and Amazon APIs

Google and Amazon both make some of their functionality available thru APIs

API = Application Programming Interface

Web services using SOAP

to use them you must

register

agree to terms and conditions (personal use?)

be prepared to program dynamic Web pages (using Java, ASP, Perl, etc.)

http://www.google.com/apis/ http://www.amazon.com/apis/

What do the APIs offer?

Google

perform searches and get back results (XML)

get cached-copy of page

spell-check (“did you mean?”)

Amazon

title searches (all products, not just books)

ISBN searches

author searches

transaction creation (shopping carts)

transaction monitoring

(note: book results include metadata with cover image)

Example 1: RDN/Google spell

Example 2: ResourceFinder end-user portal RDN ResourceFinder (Cheshire II) Z/SRW gateway Z39.50 OAI-PMH SRW (SOAP) RDN Hubs http://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/zing/srw/implementors.html

Portal/metasearch service end-user library catalogue Google Amazon SOAP Z39.50 SOAP RDN SRW Fairly active interest in RDN SRW from PORTAL project (Hull) and from LIONSHARE (P2P) project in Canada

Example 3: ePrints UK

from the project proposal…

harvesting metadata from UK eprint archives using OAI-PMH

enhancing metadata by passing metadata and full-text to 3 Web services…

subject classification

name authority

citation analysis

What have we actually done

harvest/search interface live

some record enhancement being done

defined SOAP interfaces for all 3 (in text)

subject classification

not done

name authority

done via OAI-PMH GetRecord requests (I.e. not by SOAP)

not implemented as record enhancement

citation analysis

done and working using SOAP (WSDL)

E-Learning Framework (ELF)

VLEs tend to be monolithic

ELF is an attempt to unbundle functional components from within VLE

deliver components as Web Services

potentially moves eLearning part of the landscape firmly towards SOAP-based Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) approach

work being taken forward by CETIS

cf. VRE initiative (same thing for eResearch)

ELF layers Presentation layer (User Agent) Application services layer Common services layer Content Management Discover Discover Packaging Authentication Authorisation Course management Discover Collaboration Assessment …