How does VIVO Scholar compare to VIVO?
VIVO Scholar is an add-on to VIVO and not a stand-alone product or alternative to VIVO. VIVO Scholar relies on VIVO particularly for its editing interface, ontologies, inferencer, triplestore, and image repository. VIVO Scholar enhances the functionality of VIVO by providing alternative technology solutions for data storage, API development, and the creation of research profiles.
Overview of the VIVO + VIVO Scholar Stack
VIVO includes four main components: an editing interface (Vitro), a data store (Jena TDB triplestore), an API (SPARQL), and user profiles (Freemarker). The diagram below highlights the ways in which VIVO Scholar extends and enhances the functionality of these four components of VIVO.
Editing Interface - VIVO Scholar relies on VIVO to import data and does not have a mechanism outside of VIVO for editing data. VIVO Scholar does not provide any added functionality to the editing interface in VIVO.
Data Store (via Scholars Discovery) - VIVO Scholar uses Scholars Discovery to transform triplestore data in an abstraction layer. Scholars Discovery is first and foremost an ETL system which extracts data from VIVO's triplestore using SPARQL queries and transforms these triples into flattened documents.
API (via Scholars Discovery) - VIVO Scholar offers additional points of data access to VIVO data. Additionally, the GraphQL endpoint has an interactive interface that makes it easier to explore and retrieve VIVO data, even for those unfamiliar with the underlying VIVO ontology. While not used for the VIVO Scholar project, Scholars Discovery also includes a REST API.
Read-Only Front-End (VIVO Scholar Beta UI) - VIVO Scholar provides an alternative front-end using technologies that are familiar to a wide-range of front-end developers. As each institution will have different goals for their website concerning search engine optimization, accessibility, internationalization, and overall look and feel, VIVO Scholar aims to lower the barrier for making customizations to the VIVO front-end.
