Versioning in Fedora:
"Fedora open source software gives organizations a flexible service-oriented architecture for managing and delivering their digital content." http://www.fedora.info/ (accessed 3/3/08).
Fedora has a developed system of recording changes to an object, and keeping these changed versions and metadata about them within the overall record:
"In the Fedora versioning system, any modifications made to a Datastream or Disseminator through the Fedora management interface (API-M) will automatically result in a new version of that Datastream or Disseminator being created by Fedora. Fedora will not create a new version of the whole digital object, instead it will version these specific components within the digital object container. This has the benefit of the digital object PID remaining constant, and not having to keep track of multiple distinct versions of a digital object.
The Fedora repository maintains all versions of all Datastreams and Disseminators, thereby creating a history of how objects change over time. Additionally, Fedora maintains an audit trail record of the nature of the object change events (e.g., who, what, when, why)." From http://fedora.info/download/2.0/userdocs/server/features/versioning.html. (accessed 3/3/08)
Research into how Fedora could be used to organise versions has been
carried out:
www.escidoc-project.de/media/
Good Local Practice:
It should be noted that the facility to automatically create new versions is an option that is by default should be set to on. However, repository managers may wish to check this option with their systems team.
Additionally, Fedora's audit trail will not be generated automatically - this information needs to be filled in by the person making the changes.
Next Section:
Please go back to the Software Development Index.