Manuele Simi

DILIGENT: integrating digital library and Grid technologies for a new Earth observation research infrastructure

This paper introduces DILIGENT, a digital library infrastructure built by integrating digital library and Grid technologies and resources. This infrastructure allows different communities to dynamically build specialised digital libraries capable to support the entire e-Science knowledge production and consumption life-cycle by using shared computing, storage, content, and application resources. The paper presents some of the main software services that implement the DILIGENT system. Moreover, it exemplifies the provided features by presenting how the DILIGENT infrastructure is being exploited in supporting the activity of user communities working in the Earth Science Environmental sector.

An Extensible Virtual Digital Libraries Generator

In this paper we describe the design and implementation of the VDL Generator, a tool to simplify and automatise the Digital Library development process. In particular, we discuss how our approach to the realisation of this tool simplifies the task of implementing, extending and modifying such a fundamental component. This tool models its issue as a generic search problem that can easily be adapted to different application scenarios. In particular, to guarantee its extensibility we carefully identify, isolate and organise the VDL Generator constituents, i.e. (i) the set of logical componentsthat can be used when designing a Digital Library, (ii) the set of physical componentsthat by implementing the logical components contribute to implement the Digital Library and (iii) the search strategyexploited to accomplish the generation task. Furthermore, we report on the experiences matured in implementing and exploiting such an innovative service in the context of the Diligent EU funded project and discuss future plans for its consolidation.

From heterogeneous information spaces to virtual documents

This paper introduces DoMDL, a powerful and flexible document model capable to represent multi-edition, structured, multimedia documents that can be disseminated in multiple manifestation formats. This model also allows any document to be associated with multiple metadata descriptions in different formats and to include semantic relationships with other documents and parts of them. The paper discusses also how the OpenDLib Digital Library Management System exploits this model to abstract from the specific organization and structure of the documents that are imported from different heterogeneous information sources in order to provide virtual documents that fulfill the needs of the different DL user communities.

Moving digital library service systems to the grid

The architecture of a digital library service system strongly influences its capabilities. In this paper we report on our experience with a distributed digital library system, OpenDLib, and we describe why, in the attempt to better satisfy the user requirements, we decided to develop DILIGENT, a service-oriented digital library infrastructure on the Grid. The paper describes and compare the two systems by focusing, in particular, on that part of the architecture that controls and supplies the necessary features for creating and managing digital libraries.

DILIGENT: a digital library infrastructure for supporting joint research

Through the handling of new type of documents digital libraries have the potential to revolutionize the way in which joint research is conducted. In order to make this possible, digital library systems based on new technologies must be introduced. This paper briefly introduces DILIGENT, a digital library system that is being developed by integrating digital library and grid technologies, and it discusses the new types of documents that it is able to support through the merge of these technologies.

Functional adaptivity for digital library services in e-infrastructures: the gCube approach

We consider the problem of e-Infrastructures that wish to reconcile the generality of their services with the bespoke requirements of diverse user communities. We motivate the requirement of functional adaptivity in the context of gCube, a service-based system that integrates Grid and Digital Library technologies to deploy, operate, and monitor Virtual Research Environments defined over infrastructural resources. We argue that adaptivity requires mapping service interfaces onto multiple implementations, truly alternative interpretations of the same functionality. We then analyse two design solutions in which the alternative implementations are, respectively, full-fledged services and local components of a single service. We associate the latter with lower development costs and increased binding flexibility, and outline a strategy to deploy them dynamically as the payload of service plugins. The result is an infrastructure in which services exhibit multiple behaviours, know how to select the most appropriate behaviour, and can seamlessly learn new behaviours.

OpenDLibG: extending OpenDLib by exploiting a glite grid infrastructure

This paper illustrates how an existing digital library system, OpenDLib, has been extended in order to make it able to exploit the storage and processing capability offered by a gLite Grid infrastructure. Thanks to this extension OpenDLib is now able to handle a much wider class of documents than in its original version and, consequently, it can serve a larger class of application domains. In particular, OpenDLib can manage documents that require huge storage capabilities, like particular types of images, videos, and 3D objects, and also create them on-demand as the result of a computational intensive elaboration on a dynamic set of data, although performed with a cheap investment in terms of computing resource.

eLibrary and ARTE: two OpenDLib digital libraries

This demonstration shows two experimental digital libraries, e-Library and ARTE, which have been built by configuring appropriately the OpenDLib digital library system and then acquiring content with different approaches. Through these DLs we intend to demonstrate the capability of the OpenDLib system to be exploited in different application contexts.