...

The API-X milestone demo uses the docker environment to package pre-configured instances of Fedora, API-X, and services into lightweight "containers" that behave much as if they were deployed in separate virtual machines.    docker-compose is used to run the demo on an evaluator's local machine.  Using docker-compose, the demo environment can be created, paused/resumed, or wiped clean at any point.  

Providing feedback

Please provide general feedback or questions on the demo in the form of comments on this page.  

Bugs and/or feature requests can be submitted on github.  We will try to fix any bugs affecting the demo as soon as possible, and incorporate fixes into the docker images so that they can be pulled into your demo environment as soon as they are available.   Feature or improvement requests on github are especially welcome.

When performing the evaluation tasks, please keep the following questions in mind when formulating feedback

• Do any aspects of API-X seem particularly useful or not useful for your own use cases?
• Was any step particularly difficult or burdensome, or surprisingly easy?  Do you have any suggestions for improvement?
• Do you feel any particular topic should be explored in greater depth in a future milestone demo/evaluation?
• Do you have any unanswered questions?

Evaluation Tasks

We have created a number of evaluation tasks to guide evaluators through the API-X demo.  Most (but not all) current API-X features are encountered in one form or another in the demo tasks.  The tasks do not have to be done linearly, and they do not have to be done all at once.  The  

The tasks are described in detail by following the links in the below outline outline.  Please read running the evaluation before you start for some helpful information to make the process go smoothly.

1. Resources, URIs, and Proxies
   1. Look at a Fedora object via direct and proxy URIs in order to compare and contrast representations
   2. Look at proxied binary resources
2. Service Documents
   1. Retrieve and analyze a service document
   2. Look for a specific service
3. Interacting with exposed services
   1. A passive resource-scoped service (i.e. just use a GET on a service endpoint to get FITS-extracted metadata)
      
   2. Links within exposed services
      
   3. Query parameters (explore a fascinating image manipulation extension based on ImageMagick)
      
4. Loading and deploying extensions
   
   1. A tour of the service registry
      
   2. The loader extension
      
   3. Loading an extension manually
      
   4. Auto-loading extensions (see how services can self-register themselves and the extensions they implement)
      
5. Ontologies and Binding
   
   1. Simple binding by rdf:type
      
   2. Binding by inference
      
   3. Extensions as ontologies
      
   4. The ontology registry
      

...

If anyone is interested in evaluating the demo when it is released in order to provide valuable feedback, please , feel free to place your name as an participant on this page, and/or stay tuned for further communicationor just get started and provide feedback when inspired.  We are asking participants to 1) provide feedback on the content of the evaluation tasks and guide (e.g. are there tasks we are missing?) and 2) download the demo and execute the tasks, and provide feedback on the experience.

Please sign up by listing your information below, and help us understand a little bit about yourself.  For example, your institution (if not already linked from your wiki profile), what you do, and the role you are playing within the context of API-X evaluation (e.g. stakeholder, developer, user experience, systems operations, etc.).

People who have helped participate in the creation or evaluation of the demo include:

• Elliot Metsger - Johns Hopkins, Software Engineer, API-X stakeholder and developer
• Ruth Duerr - Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship, API-X stakeholder, Data Manager/Informaticist, ex-operations manager, ex-archive manager, ex-systems engineer, ex-software engineer & developer
• Joshua Westgard - University of Maryland Libraries, API-X stakeholder, repository application manager
• Aaron Birkland - Johns Hopkins, Software Engineer, API-X developer
• Unknown User (acoburn) and Bethany Seeger - Amherst College, API-X stakeholder and developers of the Amherst extensions used throughout the demo