On Fri, 6 Mar 2015, Smith, Steelsen wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I'm new to this list, so if there are any conventions I'm ignoring I'd 
> appreciate someone letting me know.
>
> I'm working on a project to allow requests that will go to multiple 
> systems to be aggregated in a requesting interface. It would be 
> implemented as an independent application, allow a "shopping list" of 
> items to be added, and be able to perform some back end business logic 
> (availability checking, metadata enrichment, etc.).
>
> This seems like a very common use case so I'm surprised that I've had 
> trouble finding anyone who has published an application that works like 
> this - the closest I've found being Umlaut which doesn't seem to support 
> multiple simultaneous requesting (although I couldn't get as far as 
> "request" in any sample system to be certain). Is anyone on the list 
> aware of such a project?


I'm aware of such a project.  And it's been the bane of my existance for 
5+ years.  I've actually asked my boss to fire me a few times so that I 
don't have to support it, as it's more like babysitting than anything 
else.

However, it's for science archives, not libraries, and only really 
supports objects that are stored in FITS (Flexibile Image Transport 
System).

I cannot in good faith recommend that anyone use it.  I've even started up 
a mailing list for IT people in solar physics archives so that I can try 
to make sure that we fight against implementing it for any new scientific 
missions.

-Joe

ps. it's not an independent application ... it's the service that does 
the 'metadata enrichment' because they store all of the data without any 
metadata so that anyone outside not running their custom software can 
actually make use of it ... and then I manage the system that does the 
aggregation, and someone else wrote the logic for availability checking 
(which seems to have decided to crap itself last month, shortly after the 
programmer who wrote it 5+ years ago moved on to another job).

pps.  if you're going to implement something like this, I'd recommend 
using metalink for the 'shipping cart' sort of stuff, and hand off to some 
dedicated download manager.  For our community, an even better option 
would be BagIt with a fetch.txt file, but the client-side tool support 
just isn't out there.