1. Enforcing Interoperability with the Open Archives Initiative Repository Explorer
Hussein Suleman,
Digital Library Research Laboratory
Virginia Tech

2. Overview of the OAI What is the Open Archives Initiative?
What is the Metadata Harvesting Protocol?
What is an Open Archive?
History of the OAI
Development of the OAI Protocol
Brief description of the OAI Protocol
JCDL 2001

3. Repository Explorer Technical Testing Tool
Simulates use of an archive (aka a Repository) by a typical service provider
Allows browsing of an archive’s contents using only the OAI protocol (aka Exploring)
Checks syntax and encoding of data
Interactive and Non-interactive modes of testing
JCDL 2001

4. Motivation Chicken-and-egg problem with protocol
Lack of service providers
Need for “stub” routines
Ambiguity in interpretation of protocol
Need for validation of implementations
Data quality assurances
JCDL 2001

5. Validation Procedure HTTP – check for server errors
XML
Schema
Processor
XML
Parser
Protocol
Checker
HTTP
HTTP – check for server errors
Schema – check for conformance to XML Schema Description
Parser – check for validity of XML structure and encoding
Protocol – check protocol-specific requirements
JCDL 2001

6. Interactive Browsing
JCDL 2001

7. Parameter Testing
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8. Browsing
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9. Browsing
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10. Browsing
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11. Browsing
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12. Browsing
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13. Multiple views of data
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14. Multilingual Support
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15. Automatic Test Suite
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16. Error in Response
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17. Error in XML
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18. Conclusions and Future Work
Compliance testing is a critical part of protocol development and support in interoperability efforts
Support future versions of OAI protocol
Generalize to other protocols
JCDL 2001

19. That’s All Folks !
JCDL 2001