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Based loosely on the ORM (Object to Relational Mapping) family of software, Topaz is a powerful object to triple persistence and query service. It has its own software codebase (http://gandalf.topazproject.org) and integrates with both the Fedora Repository service and the Mulgara RDF Database (semantic triple-store). Major re-usable software components of Topaz include the OTM - Object Triple Mapping and OQL - Object Query Language. The Topaz Project is working with the Fedora Repository Project on re-architecture efforts that benefit both projects and bring them closer together. One result of this work in the past 6 months is the new Akubra Project, described next.
Akubra Project
The Akubra Project is a new effort developed jointly by the Fedora and Topaz project teams as the first area of joint architecture work. The goal of Akubra is to provide a pluggable storage component that supports transactions on common file systems plus the ability to support multiple customized storage options at the same time. Akubra was a result of the architecture analysis by the Fedora and Topaz developers that concluded that the best opportunity for moving forward on joint architecture was to focus on building open source components to facilitate better integration of the low-level storage of files/bitstreams/blobs, and pluggability of heterogeneous underlying storage systems. We plan to integrate the new Akubra software with both the Topaz OTM and the Fedora Repository service. The primary intent is to create better abstraction and separation of concerns between file/bitstream/blob storage, and the services that Topaz and Fedora provides over them. Once this is done, there will be more flexibility in terms of how Topaz and Fedora can evolve architecturally.
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