Richard Akerman’s recent post highlighting SOA resources at Educause reminded me about the aggregation point on Educause Connect for SOA resources. I’m assuming significant number of those interested in applying SOA to library systems are at an institution of higher education or in some related organization, so I’m adding the RSS feed for that aggregation to Planet LibrarySOA. This will undoubtedly result in a large spike of “new” postings to the planet aggregator, but should settle down after that.
If you are blogging about the application of SOA to libraries and want your postings to see a wider audience, let me know and I’ll add you to the aggregator.
Permanent link to this post (109 words, 26 seconds estimated reading time) Back in June, Eric Schnell posted a five part introduction to applying Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) concepts to library applications. Along with his comparison of the predominant ILS architecture with Henry Ford’s application of assembly line manufacturing this is a great non-techie introduction to SOA form a library application perspective. I had reason to run across these again earlier this month and remembered that I had not posted a summary and pointers here.
This is a preview of Eric Schnell’s Introduction to Library SOA
. Read the full post (171 words, 41 seconds estimated reading time) cforms contact form by delicious:days
Resources tagged with ‘librarysoa‘ in del.icio.us will also appear in the aggregator.
Mechanics
Planet Library SOA is created using the
Planet software — a tool for aggregating and republishing RSS feeds. In the case where the contributor runs the WordPress software,
Planet Library SOA subscribes to the RSS feed of a category or tag from that blog. In the case where the contributor runs the Movable Type software, a Yahoo! Pipe is used to extract SOA-related postings from the blog’s general feed. (For example, see this
Yahoo! Pipe for Lorcan Dempsey’s blog. My gratitude goes out to Stephen Anthony for
his example on how to get Yahoo! Pipes to extract content from feeds and Ryan Gallagher for
a workaround to
a bug in Pipes.)
Permanent link to this post (142 words, 34 seconds estimated reading time) This month I’ve come across one great article and one great report on Service Oriented Architectures. The first came from Sally Rogers at Ohio State University in the form of an article from CIO magazine last year:
Koch, Christopher. 2006. The Truth About SOA. CIO Magazine, June 15. http://www.cio.com/archive/061506/soa.html (accessed March 27, 2007).
This article does a great job at laying the groundwork for the broad “what” and “why” (as well as the “why not”) of SOA, and I agree with Sally that it makes a better introduction to the topic than most of the white paper that I presented at the meeting. The two best paragraphs out of the article come towards the very end:
This is a preview of Combining Service Oriented Architecture with a Single Business Approach
. Read the full post (589 words, 2:21 minutes estimated reading time) This is part three of a continuing series on the application of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) design pattern to library systems. In the first part, the SOA concept was compared to a transportation network and the basic foundation for defining SOA was set down. The second part described what a “service” in SOA could be and proposed an example using OCLC’s WorldCat interface with item status information being pulled from a library catalog system. That part also left off with a teaser about the juxtaposition of “inventory control system” with “local catalog system” — a foreshadowing of the topic of this post: what to do about the Monolithic (er… “Integrated”) Library System.
This is a preview of The Dis-integration of the ILS into a SOA Environment
. Read the full post (1801 words, 7:12 minutes estimated reading time) This post is the second in a series about the application of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) system design pattern to library services. The first post in this series focused on defining “Service Oriented Architecture” using the analogy of a transportation network. This post goes into some detail about what makes a “service” in this architecture and offers an example using a hypothetical use case: a union library catalog (Open WorldCat) making a statement about the availability of a book.
This is a preview of Services in a Service Oriented Architecture
. Read the full post (2003 words, 3 images, 8:01 minutes estimated reading time) This post is the first in a series over the next few days that in total will attempt to lay the groundwork for a discussion of applying the Service Oriented Architecture (or SOA) software design pattern to systems and solutions in the library space. It starts with comparing the SOA concept with a multi-modal transportation network. Subsequent posts will outline use cases and describe how SOA can be applied to libraries.
This is a preview of Defining “Service Oriented Architecture” by Analogy
. Read the full post (927 words, 3:42 minutes estimated reading time) I’ve been tasked to write a whitepaper envisioning a Service Oriented Architecture for OhioLINK’s services and operations. I’ve found a bit of information through my own networking and searching, but in putting out this list and asking for additions I want to be sure that I’m not already missing the holy grail of documents that I could just rebrand as an OhioLINK document. (With appropriate permission, of course.) I’m looking for strategic/explanatory documents over technical documents, although the latter will undoubtedly be useful in later iterations and derivatives of the whitepaper.
CDL Common Framework
This is a preview of Seeking Documents on the Application of Service Oriented Architectures in Academic Libraries
. Read the full post (830 words, 3:19 minutes estimated reading time) Please note — this is a copy of the FEDORA Workflow Working Group minutes from the FEDORA Wiki. It is being posted here in order to get it into the blogosphere at the right places. Please make comments on the FEDORA Wiki “talk” page rather than on this posting.
FEDORA Workflow Working Group Meeting
18-Jun-2006, University of Virginia
Attending: Grace Agnew, Rutgers U.; Chris Awre, U. of Hull; Dan Davis, Harris Corp.; Richard Green, U. of Hull; Peter Murray, OhioLINK; Matthias Razum, FIZ Karlsruhe; Bill Parod, Northwestern U; Adam Soroka, U. of Virginia; Thorny Staples, U. of Virginia; Ross Wayland, U. of Virginia
This is a preview of Minutes of the FEDORA Workflow Working Group meeting of 18-Jun-2006
. Read the full post (1282 words, 5:08 minutes estimated reading time) While in UNC-CH for JCDL I’ve had occasion to rant with/at some people about the state of the integrated library system marketplace — including, of course, how we got into the spot we’re in and how we might get out of it (and those people were kind enough to engage in the rant). Along comes a series of posts from Casey Bisson and Nicole Engard ultimately pointing back to John Blyberg’s “ILS Customer Bill-of-Rights” that is singing the same tune. There still seems to be a desire for a solution from an existing vendor, and in fact that was part of counter-points brought up by some on the receiving end of the ILS-must-go rant. (Paraphrased: ‘No one can satisfy the need of a library like a library automation vendor’ and ‘As libraries we’re not strong enough to take on the task of building the next ILS ourselves.’) Yet there does seem to be this mounting pressure to get control again over our data and how we present it to patrons.
This is a preview of Is the Writing on the Wall for the Integrated Library System?
. Read the full post (1188 words, 4:45 minutes estimated reading time) 