ProducerOverview

Overview

A producer tracks clients, submissions, and provides a way to organize all data at a site. It does this by allowing data to be organized into a large hiearchy that covers an entire site, and most likely mirrors the organizational structure of a group. For example, a research project wishing to archive it's data may set up one producer, and organize holdings according to lab and data type. An example for the archive project between UMD, SDSC, and NARA may be as follows:

Submissions, Attachment points and divisions

To make ingesting and managing data easier, points in the hiearchy can serve different purposes. They are submissions, attachment points, and folders or divisions.

Submissions

The lowest grouping of data at the producer is a single submission by a client. A submission consists of a set of related files that will be archived and managed as a block. It may range from one file listed under a Technical Report, to a directory of source code containing all code for the PAWN producer. A submission is attached to only one client and should be considered an inseperable object. It is up to a client to create and organize the contents of a submission.

Attachment points

They are the next highest level of abstraction. An attachment point is a point in the hiearchy where submissions are uploaded into. They are in essense a dropbox for client data. In the above example, each year under progess reports may be an attachment point allowing clients to submit data into them.

Attachment points also have permissions associated with them to limit who can attach data. In the above example, clients issued to SDSC would likely not be able to upload submissions into any attachments points outside of SDSC, similiarly for UMD and NARA.

Divisions

The highest level of abstraction. If you just had a list of attachment points, you may not be able to describe the organization of a producing site. A Division or folder allows for a higher level grouping of attachments into a coherent structure. it organizes holdings across and entire producer. In the above example, The divisions provide a layout of the parties involved in the project.

Views of data

The PAWN producer provides the ability to manage clients and data from all over an organization. It doesn this by presenting two views of holdings of a producer. It does this by providing two seperate views of holdings depending on who is accessing the producer.

First, is a global view that can be seen by administrators, or managers of a producer. This view is able to browse all folders, attachment points, and submissions at a producer. The view is arranged as a hiearchy over the entire producer as seen below.

• Manager/Administrator:
  

The second view is seen by data providers. Data providers are restricted in where they can upload data, so do not see the layout of an entire producer, rather they just see a list of attachment points that they can upload data under. They can also browse submissions that they have uploaded.

• Client:
  

-- Main.MikeSmorul - 11 May 2005