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FOLIO is a new open source, cloud hostable, app-store based library platform, designed to facilitate collaboration between disparate development teams.

This glossary defines some terms to assist developers.

Some other relevant documents are: Acronyms, Glossary, Glossary, Glossary, Glossary.

FOLIO Components

Okapi

The FOLIO middleware and API gateway. Okapi serves as the foundation layer for managing FOLIO apps and services. For more information, see the Okapi Guide and Reference.

Stripes

The FOLIO UI toolkit. The Stripes toolkit provides a means of building web applications that expose the functionality of underlying Okapi modules. For more information, see the Stripes GitHub repository.

Stripes entities

The document Stripes entities: packages, modules, apps and more is a summary of terms used in that context, e.g. component, package, module, app, plugin.

Okapi-Stripes Platform, LSP Base, LSP Extended

The “Okapi-Stripes Platform” and the “FOLIO LSP Base” and the “FOLIO LSP Extended Apps” are defined.

FOLIO Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

For further information about SIGs and how to participate, refer to Special Interest Groups.

Some abbreviations are provided below. Note that there are other SIGs besides these.

CO

Community Outreach

DM

Data Migration

LDP

Library Data Platform - Reporting

MM

Metadata Management

RA

Resource Access

RM

Resource Management

SO

SysOps

UM

User Management

FOLIO Technologies and Concepts

Terms A-F

API

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are well-defined interfaces through which interactions happen.

App Store

An online portal for obtaining and installing software. FOLIO is designed to support the installation of both free and commercial modules and applications through an App Store.

AWS/ECS

Amazon Web Services and the Amazon EC2 Container Service is a cloud-based application deployment platform from Amazon. FOLIO is designed to play well in the cloud.

BIBFRAME

Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME).

CC

The FOLIO Community Council

CQL

Contextual Query Language (CQL). It was previously known as Common Query Language, and that is not to be confused with the OGC language of the same name.

Some starting points are:

A CQL example:

(username=="ab*" or personal.firstName=="ab*" or personal.lastName=="ab*")
and active=="true" sortby personal.lastName personal.firstName barcode

For other relevant CQL examples see the FOLIO items above, and the API docs, and the debug output for tests in each backend module.

CO

Code Owner.

CRUD

The basic functions of persistent storage: Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD).

CSP

Critical Service Patch (CSP).

DevOps

Combining software development and information technology operations: DevOps.

Docker

Docker is a platform for managing software containers. FOLIO is well-suited for deployment in a Docker environment.

DoD

Definition of Done (DoD). Criteria to decide when a feature is deemed finished, and its issue tracker tickets are closed. Refer to the management notes for each FOLIO Development Team.

DoR

Definition of Ready (DoR). Criteria to decide when a feature is well-described and is deemed ready to be scheduled to undertake the work. Refer to the management notes for each FOLIO Development Team.

DR

Decision Records (DR) – The collection of ADRs (Architectural Decision Records) is referred to as ADL (Architecture Decision Log).

DRY

Don’t repeat yourself (DRY).

ECMAScript

ECMAScript is the formally standardised version of JavaScript. The Stripes Toolkit is written in ES6, a modern variant that introduces several new facilities.

EKS

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS).

ERM

Electronic resource management (ERM).

FRBR

Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR).

Terms G-M

HOC

“Higher-order components” are a pattern for re-use of component logic with React.

HRID

Human-readable identifier (HRID) is an additional unique identifier available on some records. Also known as eye-readble identifier. Not to be confused with the UUID of a holdings record (which may also have a HRID).

ILS

Integrated Library System (ILS).

JSON

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is an open-standard format that uses human-readable text to transmit data objects consisting of lists, collections and attribute–value pairs.

JSON Schema

Vocabularies that define the format of JSON instances.

JWT

JSON Web Token is a JSON-based open standard for creating tokens that assert some number of claims. JWTs are authenticated and encrypted, and used by Okapi.

Kafka

Apache Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes (k8s) is a “platform for automating deployment, scaling, and operations of application containers across clusters of hosts”.

LDP

Library Data Platform (LDP) is an open source platform for reporting and analytics in libraries.

LM

Lead Maintainer.

LSP

Library Services Platform (LSP).

LTI

Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI).

MARC

MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) standards.

Markdown

Markdown is a simple plain text formatting syntax, used for documentation throughout the FOLIO code.

MFHD

MARC 21 Format for Holdings Data (MFHD).

MongoDB

MongoDB is an open source, schemaless document database.

Microservices

A pattern for building loosely-coupled, highly available, modular applications. Each component of a microservices-based application is a self-contained service, which communicates with other components over the network using a lightweight protocol. The FOLIO LSP is built using a microservices architecture.

Multitenancy

A pattern of software architecture in which a single instance of the software is designed to serve multiple tenants, with appropriate security provisions and data separation. FOLIO is designed from the ground up to operate in a multitenant environment.

MVP

Market-Viable Platform (MVP). Refer to the FOLIO Implementers SIG.

Terms N-R

NCIP

NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP).

Node.js

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime for deploying JavaScript code.

NPM

npm is the Node.js Node Package Manager - a mechanism for distributing packages of JavaScript code, used by Stripes.

OAS

The OpenAPI Specification (OAS) for describing RESTful web services. (Originally part of Swagger.)

Okapi gateway

See Okapi explained above.

OLF

The Open Library Foundation is an independent not-for-profit organization to ensure the availability, accessibility and sustainability of open source and open access projects for and by libraries. See Newsroom. OLF has joined the FOLIO community to help with the development of FOLIO.

PC

The FOLIO Product Council and its Charter

PO

Each FOLIO Product Owner (PO) represents the business or user community, and is responsible for working with this group to determine what features will be in the product release. Refer to the overview of Product Owners including explanation of “What is a Product Owner”, getting involved and getting started, and the Directory of Product Owners by Area of Focus.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL (often called “Postgres”) is an open source enterprise-level relational database.

PoC

Proof-of-concept (PoC)

RAML

RESTful API Modeling Language - a language for the definition of HTTP-based APIs. Okapi module APIs (including the API of Okapi itself) are defined in RAML files and JSON Schema files.

RDA

Resource Description and Access (RDA).

React

React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces.

Redux

Redux is a state container for JavaScript. Stripes uses React and Redux for building stateful JavaScript web applications.

Reference environments

Continuously built FOLIO systems to exhibit the state of development. These are linked and their automation is explained at Software build pipeline.

REST

Representational State Transfer architectural style, and RESTful web services, enable interaction between systems using a well-known set of stateless operations and responses.

RFC

Request For Comments (RFCs). Refer to the current set of FOLIO RFCs and the RFC Process.

RMB

The RAML Module Builder (RMB) framework, is a special FOLIO module that abstracts much functionality and enables the developer to focus on implementing business functions.

RMS

Release Management Stakeholders (RMS). Refer to the Critical Service Patch Process (CSP).

Terms S-Z

SDLC

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Software development process. Also abbreviated as DLC.

SEC

The FOLIO Security Team is the group is charged with overseeing the process related to identification and resolution of security vulnerabilities reported against FOLIO.

Slug

A human-readable identifier with keywords and alpha-numeric characters. Whitespace is replaced by a hyphen or an underscore character. Punctuation and accented characters are removed, thereby avoiding the need for special encoding.

Used for friendly URLs and reliable identifiers.

See Wikipedia Slug and etymology.

To “slugify” is to translate a string into a slug by replacing such characters.

Solr

Apache Solr.

SPA

FOLIO is a single-page application (SPA).

Spring

Spring is an application framework for the Java platform.

Some FOLIO modules are developed using the folio-spring-base library and the Spring Way.

SRS

FOLIO Source Record Storage (SRS).

SRU

Search/Retrieve via URL (SRU). Version “SRU 2.0” is “searchRetrieve Version 1.0, OASIS Standard”.

Stripes toolkit

See Stripes and the various Stripes entities explained above.

SysOps

System operators, systems administrators of multi-user computer systems: Sysop.

TC

The FOLIO Technical Council and its Charter.

The Wiki Tree browser helps to navigate the TC section of the Wiki.

TDO

Technical Design Owners.

TL

Technical Lead.

UUID

Universally unique identifier, a 128-bit number, see UUID at Wikipedia and How to check for a valid UUID.

UX

User experience (UX).

See User experience design and the FOLIO UX documentation site.

Vert.x

Vert.x is a toolkit for building scalable, reactive applications on the JVM. Vert.x is particularly suitable for developing applications using the microservices architectural pattern.

Some FOLIO modules are developed using the lightweight folio-vertx-lib library.

WCAG

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Webpack

The Node.js module bundler, used to deploy Stripes modules.

WOLFcon

The World Open Library Foundation Conference (WOLFcon).

WSAPI

A generic term for Web Services Application Programming Interface (see API above).

Yarn

Yarn is a package manager for Node.js and JavaScript.

ZooKeeper

Apache ZooKeeper is a service for highly reliable distributed coordination.

Z39.50

Z39.50 refers to ANSI/NISO standard Z39.50, and ISO standard 23950 “Information Retrieval (Z39.50): Application Service Definition and Protocol Specification”.

The Library of Congress is the Z39.50 Maintenance Agency.

See z2folio - the Z39.50-to-FOLIO gateway.