Difference between revisions of "IdAS API"

Revision as of 15:57, 13 November 2006

IdAS is a thin layer over a set of Context Providers that it manages

The IdAS API has two parts:

1. IdAS Context Provider Registry --this is the API to manage add/remove/configure Context Providers. It also allows ContextRefs to be registered. Registered contexts are in some sense pre-configured by one or more Context Factories, so that a user can query its metadata (including schema and policy) without creating an IContext instance.
2. A set of interfaces that are implemented by each Context Provider (see Context Provider Interface below)

Context Provider Interface

• See the org.eclipse.higgins.idas project in the CVS repository for the full API. The bullets below give a quick overview of the major interfaces and methods. (In cases where they disagree, the CVS repository takes precedence over this page.)

• ContextFactory
  • Responsible for the creation of IContext instances that implement a specific type of Context.
  • Responsible for associating a ContextRef with the data source (or sources) encapsulated by the designated context.
• IContext
  • Implementation of a specific type of Context.
  • A user must "open" a context, which involves authenticating to the data source, before accessing its data.
  • Includes methods to search for Digital Subjects using context-specific attributes.
• IDigitalSubject
  • Implementation of a specific type of Digital Subject.