Slides on the CERN-Solid collaboration for OSSYM === --- ## The CERN-Solid collaboration Presentation at the Open Search SYMposium (OSSYM) 2020/10/12 [Event details](https://indico.cern.ch/event/883268/) Maria Dimou – CERN-Solid collaboration manager with contributions from CERN web application developers and Jan Schill - MSc student [in the CERN-Solid code investigation project](https://it-student-projects.web.cern.ch/projects/cern-solid-code-investigation). --- ## World Wide Web - What happened * The Web was invented at CERN by [Sir Tim Berners-Lee (TimBL)](https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/) in 1989. * He defined it as a **free, open, networked Internet application**. * The Web produced an uprecedented change to human civilisation. * 30 years later, the original purpose of the Web "access to knowledge, free for all and respecting each one" is being violated. * TimBL proposed _Solid_, the open source platform aims to give people control over their data. --- ## The first ten years * TimBL went to MIT to create the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1994. * In the [CERN Web Office](https://weboffice.web.cern.ch/WebOffice/), till 1999 we: * ran TimBL's httpd - followed by the Apache web server with virtual hosting, on Unix platforms. * negotiated a free-of-charge Netscape browser support contract. * deployed _pinaweb_ (Personal Intelligent Newspaper Agent) (a web profile by CERN student Heidi Schuster). * investigated Web-based calendars * recommended HyperNews for collaborative work * and more... --- ### Web Search at CERN * CERN student Darius Kogut wrote [_Torch_](https://cern.ch/dimou/SApaper.html#torch), a search engine parsing natural english language in 1998. * This development was an intellectual satisfaction; relationship with other disciplines, the understanding of rich human language by the search engine. * As the Web was in exponential growth, we couldn't go far with in-house development. * So we evaluated Lycos and Altavista... they left a lot to desire. * Finally we signed a negligeable-charge contract with _Infoseek_, then _Inktomi_. [Slides from 1999](https://cern.ch/dimou/SAslides/searchcriteria.html) --- ### Web Search in general * Search was "innocent" at the time; * companies didn't make money out of offering, withholding, manipulating information on the web. * Google didn't exist yet. * The search results were irrelevant or incomplete, still they were what existed and not what the engine would like to show the user. * Surveillance and intrusion were not yet terms we were conscious of. --- ### CERN & Web standardisation since the year 2000 * Computing focus at CERN was turned to the huge amount of data produced at the LHC. * Proposals for a CERN-W3C collaboration remained without answer for 25 years. The suggestions were: * to combine use of the https protocol for physics' data transfer and remote access to storage with W3C standardisation work. [Details](https://cern.ch/dimou/personal/CERN-W3C_Collaboration.pdf). * to contribute design concepts in CERN applications in areas like the Data Catalogue Vocabulary, cross-service inter-operability and Authentication/Authorisation rules and restrictions. [Details](https://cern.ch/dimou/personal/CERN-W3C_Collaboration_2017_proposal.pdf). * Things seem better now. --- ### Solid - What is * TimBL announced the Solid project (Social Linked Data) in 2016, aiming to give people control over their data. His summary: * This is an open source platform, adding standards never put into the original web spec, including: * Global single sign-on, * Universal access control * A universal data API so that any app can store data in any storage place. * Socially, Solid is a movement towards a world in which users are in control, and empowered by large amounts of data, private, shared, and public. --- ### CERN-Solid collaboration - born this year 2020. CERN packages relevant to Solid spec's for evaluation: * The CERN _push notifications_, unilateral, via subscription and archived. * _Indico_, an event management open source platform, with 20 years of operational status. * _CS3MESH_, a pan-European cross-institution mesh that will offer data sharing/co-editing facilities, relying on the federation of different sites by using well-known APIs. * _InvenioRDM_, a Research Data Management, open source platform for persistent registration of research papers and data. * _The new CERN Authentication_ project. Web pages of the above in the "References" at the end. --- ### Activities now MSc student Jan Schill from https://itu.dk started working on [this project](https://it-student-projects.web.cern.ch/projects/cern-solid-code-investigation). Goals include: 1. understanding which Solid specifications are ready and clear. 2. evaluating the first Solid implementations. 3. making a recommendation to the CERN open source applications on Solid adoption (or not). 4. exploring Indico, to test the Solid principles, by: * modifying-ala-Solid the _Indico registration form_ module, so that registration data belong to the user and not to Indico. * enriching _Indico meeting_ pages with Solid-based content, such as comments. Indico-related suggestions by TimBL and [Pedro Ferreira](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pferreir/). --- ### Search-related work in Solid * In Solid, data is stored in [Pods](https://solidproject.org/faqs#pod). * Current and planned work in Solid includes: 1. The 'Search UI' item in TimBL's roadmap (next slide) - client-side interface, for searching in one's own pod. 2. Server-side pod-wide search functionality by Fred Gibson for the TrinPod implementation of a Solid server. 3. Solid-user-search for searching a person (like in a phonebook) 4. hashtag-search, for content that is related to a given hashtag. For design details and development status contact [Michiel de Jong](https://michielbdejong.com/). --- ### Solid (evolving) roadmap  --- ## References I [1] The original Web proposal https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html [2] The CERN-Solid Indico category https://indico.cern.ch/category/11962/ [3] The Solid project web site https://solidproject.org [4] The CERN Web Office (most data missing today) https://weboffice.web.cern.ch/WebOffice/ [5] The CERN Torch search engine http://cern.ch/dimou/SApaper.html#torch [6] CERN-W3C 2014 proposal https://cern.ch/dimou/personal/CERN-W3C_Collaboration.pdf [7] CERN-W3C 2017 proposal https://cern.ch/dimou/personal/CERN-W3C_Collaboration_2017_proposal.pdf --- ## References II [8] Push notifications archaeology - proposal in 2003 https://cern.ch/dimou/it-us/zephyr.shtml [9] Push notification proposal in 2020 https://codimd.web.cern.ch/p/ry5_j4r2U#/ [10] Linked Data Notifications: https://www.w3.org/TR/ldn/ [11] The WebSocket Protocol: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455 [12] Indico https://getindico.io/ [13] The Road to the new CERN Identification https://auth.docs.cern.ch/whitepapers/the-road-to-new-auth/ [14] CS3 MESH https://silo2.sciencedata.dk/sites/cs3mesh4eosc/ [15] InvenioRDM https://inveniosoftware.org/