NAME

Metabase - a database framework and API for resource metadata

DESCRIPTION

Metabase is a database framework and API for resource metadata. The framework describes how arbitrary data ("facts") are associated with particular resources or related to each other. The API describes how to store, retrieve, and search this information.

History and Motivation

Metabase was originally designed as a means of storing reports from the CPAN Testers project. When Metabase was initially developed, CPAN Testers reports were sent by individual testers to a single email server, which then forwarded them to a USENET group, which was considered the authoritative store. This presented problems: some testers couldn't send email, the system wasn't very searchable or mirrorable, and the data inside the system was entirely unstructured.

Metabase aimed to avoid all of those problems by being transport-neutral, searchable and mirrorable by design, and geared toward storing structured data. Simplicity is another design goal: while it has several moving parts, they're all simple and designed to be replaceable and extensible, rather than to be a perfect design up front.

OVERVIEW

A Metabase has several parts:

• Metabase::Gateway, which manages submission of facts to the Librarian

• Metabase::Librarian, which manages access to the Archive and Index

• Metabase::Archive, which stores and retrieves facts

• Metabase::Index, which indexes and searches facts

Archive and Index are abstract base classes. Implementations could use flat files, relational databases, object databases, cloud services, or anything else that can satisfy the API.

Metabase comes with some standard backends:

• Metabase::Archive::Filesystem

• Metabase::Archive::SQLite

• Metabase::Index::FlatFile

• Metabase::Index::Solr

Facts stored with in a Metabase are defined as subclasses of Metabase::Fact. Metabase::Report is a subclass that relates multiple facts.

Metabase::Web provides the web API for storing, searching and retrieving facts. Metabase::Client::Simple is the client library to submit facts to a Metabase::Web server. A future Metabase::Client class will provide submit and search capabilities.

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature using the CPAN Request Tracker. Bugs can be submitted through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/Dist/Display.html?Queue=Metabase

When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.

AUTHOR

• David A. Golden (DAGOLDEN)

• Ricardo J. B. Signes (RJBS)

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Portions Copyright (c) 2008 by David A. Golden
Portions Copyright (c) 2008 by Ricardo J. B. Signes

Licensed under the same terms as Perl itself (the "License"). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. A copy of the License was distributed with this file or you may obtain a copy of the License from http://dev.perl.org/licenses/

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.