As the DiSSCo Transition Project (DTP) is in full swing, the DiSSCo Development team will be giving regular (bi-monthly) updates on the progress. This progress will mainly focus on Task 3.1 – Further develop the piloted Digital Specimen Architecture (DSarch) into a Minimum Valuable Product (MVP). However, as the development team is also involved in other tasks within DTP, as well as other projects such as TETTRIs, we will also include updates on our work there.
The OpenDS public review closed mid-September, and we’d like to thank everyone who took the time to review and get involved. After sorting through over 50 comments and suggestions, we’re proud to release OpenDS 0.4, which you can explore on our Terms Site. The biggest changes from 0.3 are: the Identifier and Agent objects are more generic, we’ve aligned more with TDWG’s Audiovisual Core for media Objects, and we’ve refined use cases for specimens with multiple components – such as a rock specimen with multiple fossils.
Why not call this a 1.0 version? We know there are still improvements to be made. Before releasing OpenDS 1.0, we want to align with the TDWG Mineralogy extension to further support geological specimens, publish our terms, and enforce controlled vocabularies where applicable. However, OpenDS 0.4 is stable enough that it will be the version of the DiSSCO MVP, which will be released later this year.
OpenDS 0.4 isn’t the only new data model to be released this period. DiSSCo has also released a 1.0 version of its FDO profiles for: digital specimens, digital media, annotations, source systems, machine annotation services, and data mappings. FDO Profiles define the metadata for persistent identifier records. That’s useful for machines, who can use the records’ metadata as input to decide whether or not they need to resolve the PID at all, and what actions they can expect to perform on the object.
DiSSCo may be minting DOIs for digital specimens and media, but it’s also important to consider how that information can get back into the source systems. In this demo, we discuss the technical architecture of the data exporter pipeline – from a user’s request to an email in their inbox. This workflow is designed to be flexible, supporting different kinds of data export jobs as use cases arise.
And that’s not the only new feature in the works. We also saw a preview of the new annotation wizard on DiSSCover. OpenDS 0.4 is intended to be as flexible as possible to support many different use cases, but that means a user may have difficulty targeting the fields or classes they mean to. The annotation wizard guides users in the annotation making process, helping them select the intended target and auto-filling existing data.
We concluded the demonstrations with 15 minutes of questions. We would like to thank all participants and hope to see you at our next demo in December!
The following topics were presented in the demo:
- OpenDS review has ended and feedback has been incorporated into version 0.4.0
- FDO profiles have been updated to version 1.0!
- Produce auto-accepted annotations when data gets created/updated
- Entity relationships between digital specimen and -media
- Annotation wizard in DiSSCover
- TETTRIs Marketplace
- Improved data model
- Integrated form for adding taxonomic service
Looking forward to our next demo, which will be held in December, we hope to show the following topics:
- Finalise implementation of openDS 0.4 in infrastructure
- Continue frontend code improvement (annotation / MAS)
- Documentation for supplying data/metadata
- Finalise DiSSCo Data Exporter
- Help MAS providers integrate with DiSSCo infrastructure (T3.2/MS16)
- Move to Observability stack Naturalis for monitoring/logging/auditing
- Improved logging/registration and integration with ORCID
- Tombstoning specimen records
- Extensive testing of MVP product
- Vocabulary Server
- Work towards TETTRIs Marketplace
- Gather requirements and prioritise for after MVP (WP2.1/MS10 task)
- Workshop 30 of October
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