Materials Data Centre

As with any new project, we love to use the latest and greatest tech to get the job done.

EPrints. The core of our document repository work. Written in PERL it's a great platform for development.

REST and SOAP/XML. Interoperable distributed systems architecture, SOA all the way.

C# and Windows Communciation Foundation (WCF). The MDC back-end is written using .NET. WCF means we are able to simultaneously publish REST and SOAP/XMl interfaces from the same code base.

SWORD. We didn't use this, but are planning to include it for the MDC middleware in the very near future.

A review of materials schemas has identified 3 potential candidates for the MDC back-end, MatML @ www.oasis-open.org/committees/materials, EC MatDB @ odin.jrc.ec.europa.eu, and NMC MatDB @ www.nims.go.jp/vamas_twa10.  These schemas are at various stages of development, each with their own benefits and limitations.  Most promising appears to be the EC MatDB schema, about which you can read more @ www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/dsj/7/0/7_179/_article.

For Ep2DC and Materials Data Centre we are using Codeplex and the Ms-Pl open source license.

Our projects are managed through the Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing at Southampton. we like to make sure that our projects have some longevity, and possibility for extension throughout their life. As we work closely with Microsoft, we like to use their open source licenses to ensure that any output from us may be used by them in future initiatives. If you want to find out more about Ms-Pl and Ms-RL licenses check out - http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/communitysourcelicensing.mspx