We are currently using Fedora 3 for storing our repository object binaries and metadata. However, Fedora 3 is end of life and unsupported, so eventually we’ll have to decide what our plan for the future is. Here we inventory some of the functions that we use (or could use) from Fedora. We’ll use this as a start for determining the features we’ll be looking for in a replacement.
- Binary & metadata storage
- Binary & metadata versioning
- Tracks object & file created/modified dates
- Checksum calculation/verification (after ingestion, during transmission to Fedora). Note: in Fedora 3.8.1, Fedora returns a 500 response with an empty body if the checksums don’t match – that makes Fedora’s checking less useful, since the API client can’t tell why the ingest caused an exception.
- SSL REST API for interacting with objects/content
- Messages generated whenever an object is added/updated/deleted
- Grouping of multiple binaries in one object
- Works with binaries stored outside of Fedora
- Files are human-readable
- Search (by state, date created, date modified – search provided by the database)
- Safety when updating the same object from multiple processes