[OAI-general] Re: Kepler: Author-Based Archivelets

[Xiaoming Liu]

Dear Tim,

There is no problem of implementing kepler functionalities using existing
web server, like most OAI compliant data providers. But the key difference
here is the targetted users, kepler is supposed to be used by common users
(not necessarily computer science major) in desktop, for many of these
users, it may not be easy/convenient to install a complex web server and
make it OAI-compliant.

The model of kepler is very similiar to napster/gnutella, people simply
download it and share their files. I think both centralized model
(traditional webserver) and distributed model (peer-2-Peer) can implement
the file sharing functionalities, but both have its advantages and can not
substitute each other.

regards,
liu



On Thu, 31 May 2001, Tim Brody wrote:

> [re. kepler architecture]
> 
> > The similarities between eprint-archive and kepler:
> > Both are OAI compliant and support self-archiving.
> >
> > The differences:
> > Kepler is targeted to typical users, it's easy to use and self installing,
> > like most windows applications. From the user's point of view, they don't
> > necessarily know anything about webserver/oai/database, the only thing
> > left is to register it and share documents. To reach this purpose, we
> > implement a very simple http server, which is self-configured, supports
> > and only supports OAI request/document download, this server and a simple
> > editor are encapsulated into a installshield package.
> 
> Apologies if you have already considered this:
> 
> Would it be possible to use existing web servers to provide the same
> functionality as kepler?

> 
> Although not intended, I believe OAI responses could be served from static
> pages. Given suitable scripts/GUI authors would upload their documents and
> related metadata, without having to have their archivelet online to support
> harvesting?
> 
> (I can foresee a relatively simple PHP/ASP script that would allow an author
> to manage his/her archivelet from a web page)
> 
> All the best,
> Tim Brody
>