Fedora: An Architecture for Complex Objects and their Relationships

TL;DR

Fedora is an extensible framework designed for managing complex digital objects and their relationships, supporting diverse representations and dynamic content, with an RDF-based model and web service implementation.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible architecture for complex object management using RDF relationships and web services, enabling diverse digital library applications.

Findings

Supports aggregation of distributed content into digital objects

Uses RDF triples to represent object relationships

Provides open-source implementation with REST and SOAP interfaces

Abstract

The Fedora architecture is an extensible framework for the storage, management, and dissemination of complex objects and the relationships among them. Fedora accommodates the aggregation of local and distributed content into digital objects and the association of services with objects. This al-lows an object to have several accessible representations, some of them dy-namically produced. The architecture includes a generic RDF-based relation-ship model that represents relationships among objects and their components. Queries against these relationships are supported by an RDF triple store. The architecture is implemented as a web service, with all aspects of the complex object architecture and related management functions exposed through REST and SOAP interfaces. The implementation is available as open-source soft-ware, providing the foundation for a variety of end-user applications for digital libraries, archives, institutional repositories, and learning object systems.