This post evaluates the results of the entire API project. For information on the project itself, see the index page.
| # | Objectives | Associated Deliverables | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Make CDLI framework API | An API for artifact data and inscriptions | ✔️ |
| A2 | Make publication metadata API | An API for bibliographical data | ✔️ |
| A3 | Convert database to new schema | Richer data to be used for the APIs | partial |
| A4 | Define and document URIs for linked data | i. URI schema for database fields ii. Documentation at those URIs | ✔️ |
| A5 | Make CDLI framework search API | An API for search results | partial |
| A6 | Use publication metadata API in journal system | Journal system were references can be linked to the general database for display | ❌ |
Status complete. The catalog supports three types of exports:
On all entities in the catalog, both requesting individual entities and paginating
through the entire list is supported. The pagination is achieved by using the
Link HTTP header. For more details, see the post of Week 11. The
JSON format is a slightly modified representation of the data as used internally.
This format is documented in the framework. The tabular exports are designed to
be compatible with the format used for importing data.
The linked data is a different story. I started out with getting as much data out there, in as many different formats available (week 8). This meant that the actual schema was entirely based on the database fields, and so neither stable nor meaningful. If I was going to solve the first one I might as well solve the second one, so after I was pointed to earlier work (Chiarcos et al., 2018) I started working on mapping the database to CIDOC-CRM (ICOM/CIDOC et al., 2011).
For archaeological data I used (Bekiari, 2014; Definition of the CRMarchaeo, 2019). For bibliographical data, which was already stored in the BibTeX format, an existing URI for BibTeX was used. I covered various concepts that were relatively specific to the CDLI catalog by defining a number of our own classes. These are documented in the framework as well, and available as OWL in RDF and Turtle.
To represent the CIDOC-CRM ontology I had to make some decisions regarding data primitives defined by both RDF standards and the ontology. These decisions, and others regarding the use of CIDOC-CRM in RDF-like linked data were guided by (Doerr et al., 2020).
Specific to inscriptions is the inscription API, which supports export in the formats ATF, CDLI-CoNLL and CoNLL-U. The CoNLL is also represented in the linked data of the inscription, in the form of CoNLL-RDF (Chiarcos & Fäth, 2017).
Status complete. Implemented as a thin wrapper around Citation.js, though some custom converters were made for internal representations of the data.
I have written down a number of changes to the database to make working with the data easier, but these changed have not been applied to the existing database yet.
Complete; see objective A1 above.
Since pagination is supported and given the way the APIs are implemented adding API results to the search pages is relatively trivial. However, given the search pages are still being worked on as of writing, the APIs are not yet added.
The API for returning bibliographies based on the linked metadata is complete. The functionality for linking articles and publications was added by Nisheal and Ajit. However, as of writing the combined functionality has not been added to the user interface.
| # | Objectives | Associated Deliverables | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| B1 | Make API for conversion services | An API for conversion services related to inscription and/or metadata formats | ❌ |
| B2 | Add (linked) data to (artifact) pages | Pages with Schema.org/Dublin Core annotations | partial |
| B3 | Document progress | Technical documentation for API use, use of data, etc. | ✔️ |
| B4 | Extend publication metadata API to journal system | Journal system where citations of articles can be exported | partial |
| B5 | Make a SDK for the API | An SDK to consume the new API (in R?) | partial |
Although I added internal support for a number of conversion services and developer documentation on how to add more, there is no public-facing API for that at the moment.
I added OpenGraph annotations to pages but given the low number of pages where Schema.org and DublinCore are actually relevant I decided to give priority to other tasks
Status complete. I added documentation on how the APIs work internally, for developers to use. I also added documentation for how the OpenGraph annotations work. Additionally, documentation for the public API is also available.
Partially complete, as in the back-end is complete but not the UI.
I started making a basic API client, but it does not have much functionality yet.
Bekiari, C. (2014, September 6). CRMarchaeo: Modelling Context, Stratigraphic Unit, Excavated Matter [Tutorial]. CIDOC 2014, Dresden.
Chiarcos, C., & Fäth, C. (2017). CoNLL-RDF: Linked Corpora Done in an NLP-Friendly Way. In J. Gracia, F. Bond, J. P. McCrae, P. Buitelaar, C. Chiarcos, & S. Hellmann (Eds.), Language, Data, and Knowledge (pp. 74–88). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59888-8_6
Chiarcos, C., Pagé-Perron, É., Khait, I., Schenk, N., & Reckling, L. (2018, May). Towards a Linked Open Data Edition of Sumerian Corpora. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018). https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/L18-1387
Definition of the CRMarchaeo: An Extension of CIDOC CRM to support the archaeological excavation process. (2019). PIN, University of Florence, Italy.
Doerr, M., Light, R., & Hiebel, G. (2020, January). Implementing the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model in RDF. 45th joint meeting of the CIDOC CRM SIG and SO/TC46/SC4/WG9; 38th FRBR – CIDOC CRM Harmonization, Heraklion. http://www.cidoc-crm.org/Issue/ID-443-implementing-the-cidoc-conceptual-reference-model-in-rdf
ICOM/CIDOC Documentation Standards Group, & CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group. (2011). Definition of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model. CIDOC-CRM. http://www.cidoc-crm.org/html/5.0.4/cidoc-crm.html
See my contributions here. For future visitors: be sure to look at the merge requests merged before the 6th of September 2020, since I might have opened new ones after.