Archived News

Solr Plugin For Fedora

June 23 2008
The DRAMA team would like to announce the release of a Solr plugin for Fedora. The code was written by Cuong Hoang, a DRAMA developer, and it's based on the GSearch code. It was originally intended for use by Muradora, but we think that it might be of interest to the wider Fedora community. The code is released under the Apache 2 license. The implementation consists a Solr requestHandler for Fedora FOXML files that is bundled with the Solr package, and a SolrDOManager.

More information about our Solr plugin and how to obtain the code can be found here

We would be happy to have any feedbacks you might have.



Muradora Demonstration Server

May 3 2008
Muradora demo server is now up and running. More information on how to use it can be found here



Muradora 1.3 Release

May 2 2008

The DRAMA team at Macquarie University would like to announce the 1.3 release of Muradora, available for download at:

http://www.muradora.org/software

Muradora is a web-based GUI for the popular Fedora repository, built using enterprise Java Spring and Struts 2 frameworks. Amongst the common features found in a typical repository such as search, browse, self-submission, and versioning supports, Muradora enables flexible access control for end users (based on the XACML standard), inter-domain authentication and federated identity (using Shibboleth implementation of the SAML standard), and multiple metadata schema management (via W3C XForms standard).

Notable features in 1.3 release:

  • Faceted Search: By incorporating GSearch 2.0 with Solr support, users can perform faceted searches, i.e. one can now narrow down search results based on other categories.
  • All-in-one installation: There is now an installation script for Unix/Linux systems which will install all the necessary components for Muradora. The complete package is called "muradora-allinone".
  • RSS/Atom Feeds: Users can subscribe to collections (even non-public collections) and get notifications of new objects added to those collections.
  • Thumbnail preview and gallery view: Thumbnails are now generated automatically for images. Thanks to the work by the MediaShelf team, one can browse and search using either the traditional listing view or with the gallery view.

We would appreciate any feedbacks from users of the software.



Muradora 1.2.1 Release

February 14 2008

Muradora 1.2.1 release is now available for download

A major emphasis of this release was bug fixes. However there are some new features in this release:

  • Better support for new XForms scripts for different metadata standards.
  • Preliminary support of Open Journal System (OJS) dissemination styles.
  • Support for IMS learning objects
  • Automatic thumbnail generation for images
  • New administration panel for administrators to assign access control to the repository
  • Statistical view of accesses to resources.

A running demo of Muradora can be found here

Note: There is a Live DVD containing the complete installation of Muradora and its related components. The Live DVD can be run directly from it without having to install Muradora on the hard disk. This DVD image is available from the download page We would appreciate any feedbacks from users of the software.

Muradora (v1.0): A Web-based Repository Supporting Federated Identity And Flexible Access Control

Oct 11 2007

Muradora is an easy to use repository application that supports federated identity (via Shibboleth authentication) and flexible authorization (using XACML). Muradora leverages the modularity, flexibility and scalability of the well-known Fedora repository.

Muradora's unique vision is one where Fedora forms the core back-end repository, while different front-end applications (such as portlets or standalone web interfaces) can all talk to the same instance of Fedora, and yet maintain a consistent approach to access control.

The DRAMA team is happy to announce the V1.0 release of Muradora. Its key features are:

  • "Out-of-the-box" or customized deployment options
  • Intuitive access control editor allows end-users to specify their own access control criteria without editing any XML.
  • Hierarchical enforcement of access control policies. Access control can be set at the collection level, object level or datastream level.
  • Metadata input and validation for any well-formed metadata schema using XForms (a W3C standard). New metadata schemas can be supported via XForms scripts (no Muradora code modification required).
  • Flexible and extensible architecture based on the well known Java Spring enterprise framework.
  • Multiple deployments of Muradora (each customized for their own specific purpose) can talk to the one instance of Fedora.
  • Freely available as open source software (Apache 2 license). All dependent software is also open source.

Muradora utilises the new Digital Repository Authorization Middleware Architecture (DRAMA Auth/Z Suite). It consists of the following components:

  • Extended XACML support with a native XML database (DB XML) for efficient storing and querying of XACML policies. There is also a new hierarchical policy combination algorithm to support hierarchical enforcement while still allowing for fine-grained access control. These extended XACML features can be used by any XACML-aware application, especially those requiring better management of their policies.
  • Pluggable and extensible authorization infrastructure for Fedora. This new architecture utilizes an interceptor pattern to remove embedded authorization logic inside Fedora and allows new authorization requirements to be added to the system without modifying any code inside Fedora.
  • Support for federated identity with Shibboleth. The actual Shibboleth authentication is done on the Fedora server itself. This is different to the common approach of having the web interface handle Shibboleth authentication which would prevent multiple web interfaces talking to the same Fedora instance. Again this module is pluggable and can be deployed on top of Fedora without any code modification. It can also be used in conjunction with existing Fedora authentication modules.

Muradora and DRAMA Auth/Z suite can be downloaded separately and installed together by following the deployment guide.

However, due to configuration flexibility and the large number of components, this installation method should be attempted only by experienced Fedora administrators.

For other users, we recommend our Live DVD which integrates allnecessary components for an "out-of-the-box" repository. The Live DVD can be used to try Muradora by booting the system from the DVD and running the pre-installed system directly from the DVD (no changes are made to the host computer's hard disk). Alternatively, the Live DVD can install Muradora on a server following an easy installation procedure that is based on Ubuntu Linux Distribution. Muradora Live DVD can be downloaded from here.



DRAMA Beta Release (Fiddler)

June 14 2007

Our Beta Release (nicknamed "Fiddler") is now available for download. The key features and improvements in this release are:

  • Hierarchical access control enforcement: Policies can be applied at the collection level, object level or datastream level. The policies are automatically inherited from the parents, and the most local policies take precedent. Thus when accessing a datastream, if there are policies specifically for that datastream, those take effect. If there are no policies, the evaluation engine traverses to the object level, finds and applies policies (if any) for that object. If there are still no policies, the engine keeps traversing up to the collection(s) to which the object belongs, looking for those collections policies. If ultimately there are no policies, a Not Applicable result is returned and depending on the default setup of the system, this can be configured as allowing or denying access.
  • Improved access control interface: One can now view existing access control of a particular user or group for a given datastream, object or collection. The interface displays the effective permission (ie. the inherited permission as well as the local permission) for that particular user or group.
  • User-centric GUI: mura only presents users with operations for which they have permissions.
  • XForms Metadata Input: We employ an XForms engine (Orbeon) for metadata input. XForms allow better user interaction, validation and supports any XML-based metadata schemas (such as MARC or MODS).
  • LDAP Filter for Fedora: The current Fedora LDAP filter (in version 2.2) does not authenticate properly, so we have developed a new LDAP filter to fix this problem.
  • Local authentication for DAR and ASM: In addition to Shibboleth authentication, the DAR and ASM can be configured to use a local authentication source (eg. via a local LDAP).
  • Generic XACML Vocabulary: XACML policies are now expressed in a generic vocabulary rather than Fedora specific ones. This applies mostly to XACML actions.
  • XACML Optimization: We have optimized of the evaluation engine by employing a cache with user configurable time-to-live. We have also greatly reduced the time for policies matching with DB XML, through the use of bind parameters in our queries.
  • Flexible mapping of Fedora actions to new Apache Axis handlers: Axis is the SOAP engine that Fedora employs to provide its web services. The new flexibility allows new handlers to be easily plugged into Fedora to support new features that follow the same Interceptor pattern as our authorization framework.
  • Version control: mura now supports version control.
  • Full-text search: We enabled full-text search by incorporating Fedoragsearch package.



DRAMA Alpha Release (Fifer)

March 21 2007

The DRAMA team is happy to announce the initial Alpha Release (nicknamed "Fifer") of our Fedora components. The aim of this release is to demonstrate the following:

  • Federated authentication (using Shibboleth) for Fedora.
  • Extended XACML engine support via the introduction of an XML database for storing and querying policies and XACML requests over web services.
  • Re-factoring of Fedora XACML authorization into an interceptor layer which is separate from Fedora.
  • A new web GUI for Fedora nicknamed mura

Since the software is still in a very early stage, this release is intended to illustrate the various designs and features, and to bed down the framework that we will be using. In upcoming releases, we will focus on stability, performance and documentation. We would appreciate any help from people trying out the software and provide feedbacks to us in making it better.

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