'traject' means "to transmit" (e.g., "trajectory") -- or at least it did,
when people still used it, which they don't.

The traject workflow is incredibly general: *a reader* sends *a record* to *an
indexing routine* which stuffs...stuff...into a context object which is
then sent to *a writer*. We have a few different MARC readers, a few useful
writers (one of which, obviously, is the solr writer), and a bunch of
shipped routines (which we're calling "macros" but are just well-formed
ruby lambda or blocks) for extracting and transforming common MARC data.

[see
http://robotlibrarian.billdueber.com/announcing-traject-indexing-software/for
more explanation and some examples]

But there's no reason why a reader couldn't produce a MODS record which
would then be worked on. I'm already imagining readers and writers that
target databases (RDBMS or NoSQL), or a queueing system like Hornet, etc.

If there are people at Stanford that want to talk about how (easy it is) to
extend traject, I'd be happy to have that conversation.



On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Tom Cramer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> ++ Jonathan and Bill.
>
> 1.) Do you have any thoughts on extending traject to index other types of
> data--say MODS--into solr, in the future?
>
> 2.) What's the etymology of 'traject'?
>
> - Tom
>
>
> On Oct 14, 2013, at 8:53 AM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>
> > Jonathan Rochkind (Johns Hopkins) and Bill Dueber (University of
> Michigan), are happy to announce a robust, feature-complete beta release of
> "traject," a tool for indexing MARC data to Solr.
> >
> > traject, in the vein of solrmarc, allows you to define your indexing
> rules using simple macro and translation files. However, traject runs under
> JRuby and is "ruby all the way down," so you can easily provide additional
> logic by simply requiring ruby files.
> >
> > There's a sample configuration file to give you a feel for traject[1].
> >
> > You can view the code[2] on github, and easily install it as a (jruby)
> gem using "gem install traject".
> >
> > traject is in a beta release hoping for feedback from more testers prior
> to a 1.0.0 release, but it is already being used in production to generate
> the HathiTrust (metadata-lookup) Catalog (http://www.hathitrust.org/).
> traject was developed using a test-driven approach and has undergone both
> continuous integration and an extensive benchmarking/profiling period to
> keep it fast. It is also well covered by high-quality documentation.
> >
> > Feedback is very welcome on all aspects of traject including
> documentation, ease of getting started, features, any problems you have,
> etc.
> >
> > What we think makes traject great:
> >
> > * It's all just well-crafted and documented ruby code; easy to program,
> easy to read, easy to modify (the whole code base is only 6400 lines of
> code, more than a third of which is tests)
> > * Fast. Traject by default indexes using multiple threads, so you can
> use all your cores!
> > * Decoupled from specific readers/writers, so you can use ruby-marc or
> marc4j to read, and write to solr, a debug file, or anywhere else you'd
> like with little extra code.
> > * Designed so it's easy to test your own code and distribute it as a gem
> >
> > We're hoping to build up an ecosystem around traject and encourage
> people to ask questions and contribute code (either directly to the project
> or via releasing plug-in gems).
> >
> > [1]
> https://github.com/traject-project/traject/blob/master/test/test_support/demo_config.rb
> > [2] http://github.com/traject-project/traject
>



-- 
Bill Dueber
Library Systems Programmer
University of Michigan Library