In order to provide content from the DDBC authority database to other web applications, we have built up a web data-provider service, which allows other web applications to query our database without connecting directly to the database server. The data provider is in fact a php script: it accepts http requests, and responds in json format. The major clients of our data-provider are our web services (e.g. the Pop-up Annotation Service), and all our web services components access data through this service. However, access to the data-provider API is not restricted to DDBC web service components. The service also accepts and responds to http requests in the proper form from anywhere in the world.
At present, all data is accessible through a single Data Service and API. However, it is expected that more data-providers will be included in the future, due to the addition of new functionaliy and/or the differentiation of existing functionality.
This data-provider allows users to retrieve data from the DDBC Authority database by by specifying the authority id. The response to the query is returned as a json string. The specification of the URI format and the schema for the json response for each of our three Authority Databases is provided below.
