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Content models will be formalized in upcoming releases of Fedora. Currently, the Fedora development team, in collaboration with the Fedora community, is developing a "content model definition language" so that content models can be formalized. Once content models are able to be expressed in a formal manner, they can be used to enable object creation, object validation, service binding, and more. Specifications are under way to introduce an xml-based way to express content model specifications, rules, and constraints. These definitions can be stored in special "content model objects" that can be ingested into Fedora repositories (like BDef and BMech objects). Storing such content model objects is a way to register content model specifications in a Fedora repository. The formalization and registration of content models will be a first step to better enabling advanced object validation, new ways of binding services to objects, and more.
Uses of Content Models
- Object Typing:
- Group identity for different kinds of objects
- Facilitates discovery via query/search
- Object Validation
- At ingest, check that object conforms to a model
- At modification, make sure changes don't break conformance to model
- Object Creation
- Templates for user interfaces enabling object creation
- Drive workflows/creation of "batches" of like objects
- Hooks for policy enforcement
- Service Binding (Behaviors)
- Community Sharing
- institutions can publish their content models in a standard way