Labels: "publishing technology", ingentaconnect, mobile, pub2web

Further to John's post about IngentaConnect mobile, if you want to find out more or see a demo of this trial service drop by the Publishing Technology stand (620) at Online Information 2008, 2-4 December. It is also an opportunity to find out more about our other services, including pub2web and Connect Compilations, which have been recently featured in this blog.

Labels: "publishing technology", connect compilations, ingentaconnect, mobile, pub2web

Even in these leaner times the focus of technology is often bigger, better, faster more, but sometimes small is beautiful, and in the case of mobile internet, jolly convenient too. That’s why I’m pleased to say that ingentaconnect is making preparations to go mobile.

We’ve been putting together a proof of concept to see how connect would look on a mobile device, and explore the benefits it could bring. What we learn here on connect will be rolled into our high end publishing platform - pub2web.

It’s been a fascinating experience with a steep learning curve. I suddenly realise that conventional browser compatibility woes are nothing compared to the differences in the way mobile platforms render their content. The variations are as fascinating as they are frustrating: countless screen sizes and resolutions, CSS may not be understood, or just partially understood, javascript? maybe, if the wind is in the right direction. Of course mobile doesn’t just mean phones, it includes PDAs too, including those running windows CE, replete with the ‘niggles’ of IE5 and 6.

As it happened we didn’t need to wade too deeply into the intricacies of handset compatibility, we drew upon the expertise of Momac, specialists in mobile publishing. Their platform, GoMedia, is capable of tailoring content to just about any mobile device you care to connect with. Take a look at the screen shot, or rather device shot, to see connect mobile in action.

Oh, and while I’m here, I’d like to take this opportunity to ask for some audience participation: if you use connect, or similar sites, and can think of a mobile feature that you’d like to see, I’d love to hear! Just pop your idea in the comments field or mail us.

Labels: "publishing technology", gomedia, handset, ingentaconnect, mobile, momac, pub2web

Connect compilations will be introduced into ingentaconnect during the next couple of weeks, its features represent a delicious sample of the technical offering Publishing Technology is cooking up.

Connect Compilations enable publishers to assemble 'virtual' publications from their existing content on connect. Compilations are given titles, descriptions, links and logos such that they look similar to conventional publications. They may be organised in familiar serial and monograph formats. At ingentaconnect Compilations may be purchased and subscribed to in the same way as other publications. Crucially the publisher has control over the Compilation, it is available to amend and augment whenever they please.

From an end user perspective Connect Compilations will be quietly integrated into the search and browse facilities on connect. For publishers the changes are more marked, a whole set of administration tools have been introduced.

To provide powerful administration tools we've increased our adoption of client side plugins (based on Jquery) and paradigms like AJAX. Both have been on the list of 'must have' technical buzz words for a some time, but we've taken care only to employ them where there is tangible benefit. Most significant is the introduction of semantic technologies; an RDF triple store for data, SPARQL to query it, Jena and our own framework to represent data to the application.

One may well ask what immediate benefit does semantic technology bring, beyond exciting programmers and web luminaries? The first benefit we'll see on ingentaconnect is tighter integration, both inside the site and with the wider web. RDF enables us to make assertions about resources (like articles, authors and references) without imposing constraints on the assertions made, or how they will be used. Crucially we can use the assertions to draw conclusions, or inferences, to fill in gaps, and really 'understand' the data. All of this is achieved with little redundancy or repetition. The factors combine to produce a store on which services to cater for varying requirements and perspectives can readily be built.

The benefits I've mentioned thus far could of course be realised with a relational database, but we're laying our new foundations at present, and more will grow out them.

In down to earth speak, all this means ingentaconnect, and close relation pub2web, will increasingly provide accurate linking, interesting ways to splice together content and, as Connect Compilations demonstrates, put control into the hands of online Publishers.

Labels: connect compilations, ingentaconnect, pub2web, publishing, publishing technology, semantic, technology

In an earlier post on the Scrum development process, I outlined why I felt a lightweight agile process was a good choice for the IngentaConnect engineering team. This set me thinking that the way we express our architecture is similarly minimal, with many of the same desirable features, such as ease of adoption and consideration of needs outside the engineering team. However, while Scrum is very much in the public eye and receives ample press, the architectural model we use, Kruchten's 4+1 View, doesn't seem to have had its fair share of the limelight.

The 4+1 view was designed by Philippe Kruchten, and like Scrum one of its guiding principles was to address the needs not just of one specific group, in this case software architects, but all the people with a vested interest in the work. Krutchen describes these folk as stakeholders. These are the developers who will write software, the integrators who will manage servers, the project managers and the product clients. The concepts in 4+1 aren't all new, but they are a unique blend. The UML offers a smorgasbord of diagrams and documents to express an architecture, Krutchen's model distils the multiple representations into just four core models, or views, reinforced by a suite of worked examples or user scenarios.

The logical view is concerned with user features, services and functional requirements. The view illustrates key concepts, or abstractions; these become the software building blocks that will be needed to deliver features.
The development view, is focused on implementation, and the organization of the software. This includes grouping of code into easily managed units, determining functional layers and the interfaces between them.
The physical view illustrates where software components are actually deployed (in simple terms which machines they run on) and considers communications between software services. It is intended for system engineers and integrators, and is likely to present a number of variations tailored to different needs, for example test systems and production systems.
The process view takes abstractions from the logical view and considers how they will behave when executed, including issues like synchronisation and concurrency. This is achieved by breaking each process into tasks whose interactions may be more readily examined.

I've mentioned the four views, what about the +1? The plus one element is a set of user scenarios, or use cases. Although as vital as the views, they are denoted by '+1' because the model is already complete without them, there should be no new architectural information contained therein. The plus one element does however play a crucial role. It illustrates and communicates the architecture, concrete examples reinforce the modelling concepts in the views, and for those not familiar with modelling diagrams they provide an idea of what the architecture can achieve. User scenarios also serve to test and verify the model; working through a realistic set of interactions can expose new concepts, and generate confidence in those already identified.

So that’s 4+1 in a (rather small) nutshell, but what does is it bring to Ingenta’s technical products such as pub2web? The value of software architecture has parallels to the value of building architecture. It provides a vision of what is being built, defining boundaries, layout and interactions. The product shape is described even though the nuts and bolts aren’t. Despite this, the architecture provides enough detail to drive component design and implementation. The discipline of 4+1 ensures that non functional requirements such as scalability and fault tolerance are considered from the outset. In short; good architecture answers questions the architects did and, crucially didn’t, expect to be asked.

Labels: 4+1, architecture, ingenta, ingentaconnect, pub2web, publishing technology, software

Just a quick posting to let you know that the latest issue of our publisher newsletter, eyetoeye, went live yesterday. It's a pretty packed issue! I've already posted some of its stories on the blog, but others are new for the newsletter. Here's its table of contents:

Contents

Welcome

News

Introducing pub2web, a next generation publishing platform
In November 2007, Ingenta announced the launch of its next generation publications platform, pub2web. In this article we explain the benefits of this feature-rich publishing system. [More...]

New faces at Ingenta: Rebecca Lenzini and Jeff Downing join our team
Our publisher and library new business groups in North America will be greatly strengthened by two recent appointments. [More...]

Subscription renewals: the simple way to keep library customers happy
Ensure your subscribers have seamless access to your content by following our simple step-by-step guide to renewals. [More...]

New publishers joining Ingenta for 2008
We highlight the latest publishers and titles to take advantage of our services. [More...]

InSider

Publishing Technology Trends: a look at the hot topics for 2008
In December we held a successful UK forum on the rapidly changing trends in Publishing online. Learn more about the topics discussed in this informative article. [More...]

Low investment, low commitment opportunity to explore new revenues
IngentaConnect's advertising programme continues to grow in strength with the announcement of an exciting new partnership. [More...]

2007 in review: 2008 insight
Last year saw many exciting developments in Ingenta. Catch up on the latest innovations and get an insight into what we have planned for the coming year. [More...]

2008 events calendar
This year is set to be another whirlwind of Conferences and shows. Find out which events we'll be attending during 2008. [More...]

InSight

What's happening in the information industry: KBART, Transfer, COUNTER, MESUR
We bring you up to speed on the various industry-wide initiatives we're involved in. [More...]

Labels: "online advertising", "publishing technology trends", counter, eyetoeye, ingenta, kbart, mesur, news, pub2web, transfer

Editor's note: Following a positive reaction to last week's social media news release, I am using the format again for this week's announcement. The "plain" version of this release here.

For immediate release
27th November 2007

Ingenta launches pub2web
Next generation publications platform is best-of-breed solution to evolving publisher and user needs

Ingenta, the technology provider that connects the publishing and information industries, today announces the launch of its next generation publications platform, pub2web. This full-service feature-rich publishing system assembles best-of-breed components into a scalable, extensible platform, building on the proven technical architecture of leading research destination IngentaConnect while offering comprehensive customisation options to its clients. [More about the system's architecture] Publishers will benefit from fully-tailored graphical design, flexible information and content architecture, and an extensive suite of functionality that ranges from standard website navigation tools, to leading-edge features that take advantage of evolving browser capabilities.

pub2web is also fully integrated with the company's award-winning Metastore, a data repository designed to support flexible content types, multiple search and browse options and semantic data mining. It goes beyond the restrictive infrastructure of paper journals to support innovative online business models, while greatly reducing content loading times, allowing content to be accessible online within minutes of upload. [More about Metastore] Meanwhile, the platform's state-of-the-art search functionality offers enhanced indexing of author names, spell checking, additional sorting options and relevance rankings. [More about pub2web searching]

Launch clients for the new platform include the World Bank, which will deploy pub2web to upgrade its e-Library, the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has selected pub2web to deliver the third generation of its prestigious online library SourceOECD. OECD's Head of Publishing, Toby Green, explains why:

"In 2000, Ingenta built our first-generation service, offering our journals, books, reference works and interactive databases in a single, seamless, website. At that time, combining such an array of different content types into a single, seamless, site was considered innovative. Now, we must continue to innovate with tools and services that increase our users' productivity and we think Ingenta's pub2web platform will allow us to do just that. Our third-generation service using pub2web will launch in mid-2008. It’s an exciting time."

"The loyalty of major clients like the OECD, IMF and World Bank is one of the critical success factors in any service organisation," comments Ingenta Vice President Douglas Wright. "I'm pleased that we can justify their commitment to us with a robust new publication platform to showcase their increasingly complex range of content. pub2web exemplifies our pro-active, dynamic approach to technology, giving publishers the control they seek and enabling us to compete very convincingly in the online publishing sector."

To find out more about our pub2web publications platform, please visit the Publishing Technology stand (404) at Online Information. Alternatively, download this PDF.


Example design for the homepage of a pub2web publications platform;
features include data feeds of news and top articles, integration of blogs and wikis,
along with more traditional features such as browse and search navigation,
access control, and help documentation.

pub2web's technical architecture is a multi-tier Java J2EE application running on the open source JBoss application server and the Jetty servlet engine. The system is backed by a mixture of database technologies including Oracle, Postgres and MySQL. Web services conforming to the REST architectural pattern are used to bring together data in real-time for creating a dynamic user experience for end users. Agile software engineering practices and rigorous release processes will allow rapid installation and deployment of a continuous stream of application upgrade, allowing Publishing Technology to deliver modular developments and ensure each client’s pub2web platform remains state-of-the-art. [back to main body]


pub2web's Metastore data repository is an RDF (Resource Description Framework) triplestore, built using Jena, an open source Java framework developed by Hewlett Packard's HP Labs. RDF provides a framework for describing resources, their metadata and their relationships. "Resources" could simply be academic papers, but the technology is flexible enough to represent any kind of research data that a publisher might wish to deliver through pub2web. [back to main body]


pub2web's search engine is powered by Open Source codebases Solr, an enterprise search server, and Lucene, a highly respected search engine library used by several applications and websites including Wikipedia. Its flexible architecture can index any file from which text can be extracted, enabling it to catalogue the many data types deliverable by a pub2web site. [back to main body]

ENDS

For more information, please contact:
Charlie Rapple
Ingenta, a division of Publishing Technology
Tel: +44 1865 397860
Email: charlie.rapple@publishingtechnology.com
MSN: rappleland@hotmail.com
AIM: Rappleland
RSS feed of Publishing Technology's news releases
Ingenta's All My Eye blog

About Ingenta
www.ingenta.com
Ingenta is the global market leader in online management and distribution of publications, allowing publishers to focus on their core business by outsourcing their online publishing requirements. Ingenta's key competences include website design and development, data conversion and enhancement, secure online hosting, access & authentication and content discoverability management. Flagship web platform IngentaConnect provides 250 research publishers and societies with a ready-made audience (of over 20,000 libraries) for their publications. For libraries and information professionals, the site offers comprehensive collection management and document delivery options for over 30,000 publications. Ingenta also develops and maintains discrete publication websites, and delivers a range of complementary technology services including Information Commerce Software, which provides flexible infrastructure and tools to enable publishers to repackage, bundle or price content online at the click of a button.

In 2007, Ingenta merged with VISTA International to form Publishing Technology plc, the largest provider of publishing software solutions. The company is listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange and has offices in Europe and North America.

Labels: books, databases, electronic publishing, journals, pub2web, publications platform, RDF, reference works, search engine