old.kete.net.nz :Blog

Topic: Kete System Requirements (work in progress)

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This document is now superseded by the Technical Requirements document.

This document is now superseded by the Technical Requirements document.

Following Jo's talk, we have had a number of questions about what we are using to develop Kete. After some deliberation and consideration we decided to run with Ruby on Rails (RoR). <!--more-->The full list of software requirements (to date):

• Ruby on Rails - for current development we are using Edge Rails, but will most likely freeze at version 1.2 for release
• Mongrel Web Server - for no other reason than it is the preferred web server for Ruby on Rails
• *nix OS - currently Debian testing "etch", but should work with other *nix's including Mac OS X, some tweaking maybe required, no plans at this stage to offer Windows support
• an RDBMS - we are using MySQL, but thanks to RoR abstraction, PostgreSQL or even Oracle, are options
• Zebra Z39.50 Full Text Search ( ) for both Kete searches (federated included) and to provide a Open Archive Initiative / Dublin Core metadata repository, we will be using a public Zebra database and a private Zebra database per Kete instance.
• acts_as_zoom Ruby on Rails plugin - this is a plugin that we have written and will be made avialble as open source seperate from Kete shortly. The plugin has the followingdependencies:

• ruby-zoom Ruby package ( http://ruby-zoom.rubyforge.org/ ) to query our Zebra servers
• ZOOM Perl binding ( http://zoom.z3950.org/bind/perl/ ) for inserting, updating, and deleting our records on the Zebra server

Ruby on Rails Plugins - These will come as part of the distribution of Kete probably (i.e. in the tar ball, ruby gem, or debian package) and likely won't require separate installation. Here's the current list:

• acts_as_versioned
• foreign_key_migrations
• piggy_back
• redhillonrails_core
• tiny_mce
• validates_http_url
• validates_xml

We have been keeping notes about our server setup, in particular how to install certain pieces of software, on the Katipo Developers blog.

• Installing Ruby on Rails Stack on Debian Testing
• Installing ruby-zoom on Debian Testing (etch)

And then once we get closer to release... Once we get into production, we will need a load balancer to sit in front of Mongrel. Pound, Pen, Lighttpd, or Apache can be used (we are not using one yet, not necessary for development). Our installation will be refined as we approach release. For example, we will include our default Zebra configuration in with our Kete application. EdgeRails will also not be needed. The Kete application will be freely available for download from the old.kete.net.nz site sometime early 2007. We will fire up a public subversion (SVN) repository at this time so that others can make contributions to the codebase. If you are interested in the project, then we encourage you to join the mailing list. See Join our mailing list