Beta 2 of "Famulus" is Live!

It took us a little longer than we would have liked but it’s finally live. LOTS of fixes from Beta 1, an API for introducing new data models either declaratively or at runtime, authentication and authorization support, modularization of data models and matching APIs, and much more. Here’s the announcement:

MSR’s Research Output Repository Platform (codename “Famulus”) aims to provide the necessary building blocks, tools, and services for developers who are tasked with creating and maintaining an organization’s repository ecosystem. Furthermore, it provides an easy-to-install and maintain experience for those who want to quickly set up a research-output repository for their project, team, or organization. The platform is based on Microsoft’s technologies (SQL Server 2008 and .NET Framework version 3.5 SP1) hence taking advantage of their robustness, their quality support infrastructure, and the plethora of developer-focused tools and documentation. New applications on top of the platform can be developed using any .NET language and the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 environment. The platform focuses on the management of academic assets such as people, books/papers, lectures, presentations, videos, workflows, datasets, and tags   as well as the semantic relationships between them. In this latest release, developers can declaratively (or at runtime) easily introduce their own asset and relationship types. Support for various formats and services such as full-text search, OAI-PMH, RSS and Atom Syndication, BibTeX import and export, SWORD, AtomPub, RDFS, and OAI-ORE are included as part of the distribution.

We are still calling it “Research Output Repository Platform” even though we have finalized on its proper name. You’ll have to wait till Open Repositories 09 for the official unveiling.

Please download, play with it, break it, and let us know of the issues you find. You can email me directly or, even better, post to our forum, where the team is eagerly waiting to answer your questions.

The next release is going to be v1.0, which is going to include a brand new and theme-enabled Web User Interface, integrated authorization functionality, and minor adjustments to the platform APIs that didn’t make it to Beta 2.