[OAI-implementers] OAICat software is available.

[Young,Jeff]

A week ago, or so, I mentioned that I was working on some open-source
software (OAICat) that would allow people to add OAI support to their own
databases. I have it cleaned up pretty well now, and packaged it up so
people can starting trying it out. Project information can be found at
http://alcme.oclc.org:4342/oaicat/. Installation notes can be found at
http://alcme.oclc.org:4342/oaicat/install.html. 

OAICat is a Java Servlet 2.2 "web application" that runs in a compliant
server such as Apache's Tomcat Server (http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/).
Once Tomcat is installed, you just copy the OAICat web application
(available at http://alcme.oclc.org:4342/oaicat/oaicat.war) into Tomcat's
webapps subdirectory and start the server. Tomcat runs on port 8080 by
default, so once the server is started, you should be able to access a
working demo from a URL such as http://my.org:8080/oaicat where "my.org" is
replaced with your machine's domain name.

When you start the server, the oaicat.war file will unpack itself
automatically. Once it's unpacked, you'll find the source code in the
webapps/oaicat/WEB-INF/classes subdirectory. Soon, this source will be
available via CVS, at which time people can join me in developing the core
code base. For the time being, I've included the source for comment's sake.

The install notes at the URL I mentioned above has a brief section with the
steps necessary to get OAICat to work with your own database. Basically,
you'll need to write a new class implementing the
ORG.oclc.oai.catalog.OAICatalog interface using your own database's API
calls. You can pattern it after ORG.oclc.oai.catalog.DummyOAICatalog, which
is used for the demo. The only other step should be to change the
webapps/oaicat/WEB-INF/oaicat.properties file to point to your new class and
specify any properties necessary to get it initialized. Use the
DummyOAICatalog properties you'll find there as a guide.

Note that OCLC is currently working on the release of an open-source
database engine called Gwen/Pears. I'm currently using this database engine
for the Theses and Dissertations repository at
http://purl.org/alcme/etdcat/. Hopefully, it will be available soon so other
people can use it for their own repositories.

Right now, my notes on all this are rather sparse. Please contact me if you
have questions about OAICat that the documentation doesn't cover. I'd like
to make OAICat as painless as possible to use, so comments and criticisms
are welcome.

Jeff

---
Jeffrey A. Young
Senior Consulting Systems Analyst
Office of Research, Mail Code 710
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
6565 Frantz Road
Dublin, OH   43017-3395
www.oclc.org

Voice:	614-764-4342
Fax:		614-764-2344
Email:	jyoung@oclc.org