R/datapack-package.r

In ropensci/datapack: A Flexible Container to Transport and Manipulate Data and Associated Resources

#' datapack, a container for packages of data and associated metadata
#'
#' @name datapack
#' @docType package
#' @author Matthew B. Jones (NCEAS), Peter Slaughter (NCEAS)
#' @description The datapack R package provides an abstraction for collating 
#' heterogeneous collections of data objects and metadata into a bundle that can 
#' be transported and loaded into a single composite file.  The methods in
#' this package provide a convenient way
#' to load data from common repositories such as DataONE into the R environment, 
#' and to document, serialize, and save data from R to data repositories worldwide. 
#' A data package is represented as an instance of the S4 class \code{\link[=DataPackage-class]{DataPackage}}, which 
#' consists of one or more instances of the S4 DataObject class, which in turn contains
#' an instance of the S4 SystemMetadata class.  The SystemMetadata
#' class provides critical metadata about a data object that is needed to transport
#' it to an external repository, including the identifier for the object, its
#' format, its checksum and size, and information about which repositories the
#' data is associated with.  DataPackages can be loaded from and saved to the 
#' DataONE federated network of repositories using the dataone package, but they 
#' can also be used as standalone transport containers for other systems.
#' 
#' A DataPackage includes a manifest based on the OAI-ORE 
#' specification for describing aggregations of files as a ResourceMap. 
#' Resource maps are RDF documents that conform to the Open Archives Initiative
#' Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE) specification. Resource maps are generated 
#' by data providers to define data packages, and have a namespace of 
#' http://www.openarchives.org/ore/terms/.
#' 
#' A DataPackage is serialized as a zip file following the BagIt RFC specification,
#' which provides a consistent mechanism for a serialized representation of a 
#' group of opaque objects in a predictable structure. BagIt includes a 
#' specification for including metadata about each of the objects, the bag itself, 
#' and fixity attributes so that any BagIt implementation can validate the 
#' components contained within a package.  When expanded, a BagIt zipfile will
#' expand to a common directory structure with a predictable set of metadata that
#' describes the structure and content of the bag.  Conformance with the BagIt
#' specification is handled by the DataPackage class.
#' @aliases datapack
#' @section Classes:
#' \itemize{
#'  \item{\code{\link{DataPackage-class}}}{: A class representing a data package, which can contain data objects}
#'  \item{\code{\link{DataObject-class}}}{: DataObject wraps raw data with system-level metadata}
#'  \item{\code{\link{SystemMetadata-class}{SystemMetadata}}}{: A DataONE SystemMetadata object containing basic identification, ownership, access policy, replication policy, and related metadata.}
#'  \item{\code{\link{ResourceMap-class}{ResourceMap}}}{: ResourceMap provides methods to create, serialize and deserialize an OAI ORE resource map.}
#' }
NULL