Fedora in Content Hosting - An Alternative

Having said that re-writing ContentHosting would be a large undertaking, 
there is another approach that could be considered.

Suppose we were to extend the existing ContentHosting service, 
specifically the ContentCollection class such that it serves as a 
gateway to a repository.  It would need to represent the protocol to be 
used (Fedora, SRA, JSTOR, whatever) and likely include at least some 
support for digital rights management.

A simple idea with a lot of consequences, both easy and hard.  On the 
plus side, repository-based collections could either be tied to a search 
pattern on the repository,or tied to a specific remote collection 
(including the root).  Done right, it would integrate seamlessly into 
existing Sakai tools, such as the ResourceTool, etc.  On the minus side, 
ContentResource might also be affected, since the tools would list 
content that is no longer directly accesible via the current 
implementation.  WebDAV integration might also be challenging.

In the intial stages, this would have to be an optional feature that 
could be enabled or disabled since I don't think that complete 
integration would come quickly.  Still, one could have an instance of 
the ResourceTool tied to a specific repository (not mixed) that could be 
billed as not supporting WebDAV or other regular content hosting features.

- Mark Norton

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