Apache Rave

Apache Rave is a new web and social mashup engine. It will provide an out-of-the-box as well as an extendible lightweight Java platform to host, serve and aggregate (Open)Social Gadgets and services through a highly customizable and Web 2.0 friendly front-end. Rave is targeted as engine for internet and intranet portals and as building block to provide context-aware personalization and collaboration features for multi-site/multi-channel (mobile) oriented and content driven websites and (social) network oriented services and platforms. For the OpenSocial container and services the (Java) Apache Shindig will be integrated. At a later stage further generalization is envisioned to also transparently support W3C Widgets using Apache Wookie.

Status of Apache Rave

Apache Rave brings together and combines several pre-existing projects and teams working towards more or less the same or overlapping goals. Each of these projects is already in production, but Rave is a brand new start. We are bringing together the best from each of the original projects in a brand new code base.

The goal for Apache Rave is to become a lightweight and open-standards based extendible platform for using, integrating and hosting OpenSocial and W3C Widget related features, technologies and services. It will also provide strong context-aware personalization, collaboration and content integration capabilities and a high quality out-of-the-box installation as well as be easy to integrate in other platforms and solutions.

The intended initial features include:

Core Features

  1. Advanced OpenSocial compliance and optional features support
  2. OpenSocial persistence and SPI (Service Provider Interface) implementation
  3. Self-service application administration including security, gadget management and page templates
  4. User and group management with full privacy model
  5. Gadget repository with life-cycle management (install/update/remove) and extended meta data (categories, comments, ratings, etc.)
  6. Dynamic and highly customizable front-end engine (skins, pages, tabs, layouts, navigation)
  7. Full OAuth support
  8. Support for security restrictions on both Gadgets and page/tag/layout customizations
  9. Set of common and general purpose Gadgets to be usable out-of-the-box
  10. Support for inter-gadget messaging with examples

Extensible Features

  1. Pluggable persistence
  2. Pluggable security model with example modules for authentication and authorization
  3. Support for OpenSocial extensions not (yet) defined in the specification
  4. Support for other (non-standard, yet) pluggable container services and extensions

Beyond these initial features the vision and scope for Apache Rave goes much further and includes integrating and providing other highly desired/needed features like:

  1. native W3C Widgets support through Apache Wookie
  2. pluggable and extendible content integration and management services
  3. space extensions and management features, like http://wiki.opensocial.org/index.php?title=Space_extension
  4. context aware features and extensions integration for personalized and social network and (mobile) device oriented sites and channels
  5. enhanced client-side widget messaging, coordination and co-location support like using OpenAjax Hub and Registry
  6. space, page and Gadget based linking, navigation, coordination and collaboration
  7. inline widget rendering, like http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SHINDIG-1402
  8. Activity Streams support
  9. integration with other social networks like with W3C Federated Social Web Incubator Group, OneSocialWeb and OStatus
  10. integration with Apache Wave
  11. runtime services monitoring, reporting and configuration/life-cycle management support