Inventory of LSID Software

Here we present a brief inventory of existing LSID software. Feel free to add new entries, add information to existing entries, or to make corrections.

This is part of LSIDSoftwareGapAnalysis.

IBM LaunchPad? for Internet Explorer

Description: LaunchPad? is an add-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer that allows the browser to handle LSIDs natively. It it provides a protocol handler for "lsidres:" protocol. See why it handles lsidres: protocol and not urn:lsid:]] (thread from LSID-dev mailing list).

Category: Client Software

Programming Platform: Developed in C plus plug and COM (Microsoft Component Object Model). Includes HTML, CSS, and a great deal of JavaScript? code. Current build environments are MS Visual Studio 6 and 7.1 (.NET 2003).

Current Status:

• Widely deployed
• Very stable
• Can be modified, extended, or fixed in anyway, given that the source code is available and it compiles fine, except for two issues that need to be sorted out:
  • Source code for installer isn't available in CVS, but can be re-generated with free, open source tools as well;
  • Resolver relies on a triple store component developed at IBM for which the source code isn't up-to-date and it does not compile. Short-term solution is to disable LSID caching on LaunchPad? for IE.

Resources:

• Website: http://lsid.sourceforge.net/
• CVS: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/lsid/lsid-COM/lsidLaunchpad2/

Contacts:

IBM LaunchPad? for Mozilla Firefox

Description: New plugin for Mozilla Firefox that handles lsidres: protocol. It is the equivalent of the protocol handler for Internet Explorer. Historically, this gap (the absence of an lsidres: protocol handler for Mozilla) was bridged by a plugin developed by RodericPage (see below)

Category: Client Software

Programming Platform: It is a Mozilla Firefox plugin. Is is coded (as any other Firefox conformant plugin) using XUL (XML User Interface Language?), RDF (skins and configuration files), CSS, and JavaScript?.

Current Status: Beta (under development). See notes below:

• Limitations: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/lsid/firefox-plugin/README.html?rev=1.1
• Changes: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/lsid/firefox-plugin/changes.html?rev=1.1

Resources:

• CVS: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/lsid/firefox-plugin/
• Install: http://jslib.mozdev.org/installation.html

Contacts:

• Alyssa Wolf at IBM

Rod Page's LSID Plugin for Mozilla

Description: This browser extension enables resolution of lsidres URIs in Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape browsers. The lsidres protocol is used by IBM's LaunchPad? for Life Sciencer Identifiers (LSIDs). At present, LauchPad? is only available for Internet Explorer 6 running on Windows. The LSID Protocol Handler for Mozilla/Firefox is a first step towards adding support for this protocol to other browsers. It doesn't actually resolve the LSID, instead it redirects the browser to the BioPathways? Consortium's LSID resolver. - description copied from Rod's website (see below).

Category: Client Software

Programming Platform: Another Mozilla plugin.

Current Status: Is it being superseded by LaunchPad? for Firefox (above)?

Resources:

• Website: http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/lsid/

Contacts:

• RodericPage

LSID Server Conformance Test Tool

Description: This tool takes an LSID and performs a number of tests on the LSID resolver, reporting conformance (or lack thereof) to the standard. Basically it takes an LSID, resolves it, gets the authority WSDL, and grabs some metadata. Rod says: it's not very detailed, isn't robust, doesn't do many tests, completely ignores SOAP, doesn't handle data yet, makes no claims to be defintive, etc., etc. We say it is really useful

Category: Client Software (to test and debug servers)

Programming Platform: PHP (based on Rod's PHP LSID stack which is under development).

Current Status:

• Stable
• Under development
• It ignores SOAP when binding to data and metadata services

Resources:

• Website: http://linnaeus.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/lsid/tester/

Contacts:

• RodericPage

Roger Hyam's Lean PHP Resolver

Description: It was a successful attempt to implement the simplest possible LSID Authority that just supports the HTTP GET bindings. The results of this were about 20 or so lines of PHP code.

Category: Server

Programming Platform: PHP

Current Status:

• Under development
• Experimental

Resources:

• More information: http://biodiv.hyam.net/authority/readme.html
• Download: http://biodiv.hyam.net/authority/authority.zip
• Sample LSID: lsidres:urn:lsid:hyam.tdwg.gbif.org:apples:4399

Contacts:

• RogerHyam

Perl LSID API

Description: This module implements an object-oriented interface for building clients and servers that resolve LSIDs and perform metadata queries on LSIDs.

Category: Client and Server API

Programming Platform: Perl

Current Status:

• Current version is 1.1.3
• Stable

Resources:

• Download: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=130827&package_id=144608
• CVS:

Contacts:

J2EE? LSID API

Description: This toolkit is a repackaging of the LSID Client Stack, LSID Server Framework and LSID sample services. In addition, the toolkit contains a build script for compiling the server and client code as well as assembling LSID resolution service web applications. It contains these components:

• The LSID Java Server Framework, a J2EE?-based architecture for building custom LSID services: authority, data, metadata and assigning. This package includes a servlet for each of these services supporting HTTP GET and SOAP that invokes a user-defined implementation. Also in this package are reference implementations of all four services. One implementation uses the LSID Java Client API to create a caching LSID proxy service for authority, metadata and data requests. SimpleAuthority? and SimpleResolutionService? provide higher level abstractions for implementing LSID services.
• The LSID Java Client API, a simple API for adding Life Science ID functionality to your application.
• Several service implementation examples involving the wrapping of public data sources.

Category: Client and Server API

Programming Platform: Java 2 Enterprise Edition

Current Status:

• Current version is 1.1.2
• Stable

Resources:

• Download: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=130827&package_id=144604
• CVS:

Contacts:

• Ben Szekely (bhszekel@usREMOVE-THIS.ibm.com)
• Dan Smith (smithdan@usREMOVE-THIS.ibm.com)

MS COM LSID API

Description: Individual packaging of the COM based LSID client stack used in LaunchPad? for IE (lsidResolver.dll).

Category: Client API

Programming Platform: C+\+ and COM

Current Status:

• Not sure about deployment (besides with LaunchPad? for IE)
• Stable

Resources:

• Download: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=130827&package_id=144614
• CVS:

Contacts:

MS .NET LSID API

Description: Porting of existing LSID APIs to MS .NET Framework

Category: Client and Server API

Programming Platform: MS .NET (C#)

Current Status:

• Current Version: 1.0.1

Resources:

• Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/lsid-dotnet/

Contacts:

• KevinRichards

(Template for New Entries)

Description:

Category: (Client/Server/Library/API)

Programming Platform:

Current Status:

Resources:

Contacts:

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