Shared infrastructure strand
Shared Infrastructure Services (SIS) will be part of an infrastructure that supports the deposit, discovery, access and use of objects and services by software applications and will increase interoperability and coherence so learners, teachers, researchers and administrators can share in the benefits of a rich distributed Information Environment.
What are Shared Infrastruture Services?
The top-level vision of Shared Infrastructure Services (SIS) is that they underpin the Information Environment providing the ‘glue’ for a distributed network of digital resources and services, to significantly improve content use, curation and also the integration of different types of services and functions.
What are the projects doing?
We envisage that SIS would break out into two categories of projects:
- Centrally provided SIS The tools and services that would need central provision for governance or efficiency reasons. Examples include a trust infrastructure and certain registries
- Organically created SIS Tools and services that are created within or outside the community and whose ongoing support and direction are determined by community need. Initial funding or funding to enhance adoption could come from JISC but their ultimate sustainability would be dependent on their community of use
How would SIS be used within the information environment?
- Users have wants, for example to find the nearest publications to them by a given author
- Service providers (of repositories, portals, etc) can, with the help of developers convert these into needs, which give useful requirements; using our example this could be a repository search that uses a geo-location service to place the user, a collection finding service to locate the appropriate publications, a geo-translation service to map where the user is relative to the collection and a series of other services to decide on what the user can access
- Developers then need services that they can easily compose together to fulfil those requirements
These could come from either SIS or could come from other services (including commercial services). The key is that clear descriptions of SIS and a good interface make it easy for the developer to combine SIS together.
How do I find out more?
See the projects below for a feel of the wide range of what is available. Most projects also maintain a blog (see the project page) so it's useful to read and comment on the posts and talk with the projects. If there isn't a blog for the project, use the contact details for the project staff to get directly in touch with the project. If you have a general question on this strand, contact James Farnhill (Programme Manager)