Java Content Repositories

I’ve been exploring ideas (using Apache’s Jackrabbit) for a specialized Content Repository as the basis for a collaboration tool to be used by researchers involved in drug discovery research.  Most research project teams are organized as a matrix of specialized laboratory and computational skill sets that combine to collaborate on data acquisition, analysis, integration and publication.  Much of the knowledge produced is stored in a variety of structured, semi-structured and unstructured formats. Capturing the knowledge generated during the research workflow and supporting the variety of  data formats is challenging.  However, I’m starting to see the value of applying a Content Repository data model for capturing research workflow data as an alternative to a traditional relational database.  Here’s an essay by Bertil Chapuis comparing the rationale for choosing content repositories versus relational databases.   This is an excellent introduction to the design of the Java Content Repository specification.

The Java community have worked to define a Java API specification called the JSR 170: Content Repository for Java technology API.  The Apache community have released a reference implementation of JSR 170 called Jackrabbit.