What is DCB?

Main Page > User manual > Overview > What is the DCB?

The Canadiana.org Digital Collection Builder (DCB) is a web-based, open-source application for standards-based resource description in a multi-lingual, multi-repository environment.

Technical Overview


The DCB comprises:

HTML pages served to a web browser from a web server. Apache is used in development but the DCB is also compatible with IIS.

A database on a database server. MySQL is used in development but the DCB uses a database abstraction layer and is therefore also compatible with Postgres, SQLite, SQLServer, Oracle, etc.

PHP software code that manages requests and responses between the web clients, the application logic and the application content stored in the database.

The Symfony web framework that organizes the component parts using object-orientation and best practice web design patterns.

The Qubit Open Information Management toolkit, developed by the ICA-AtoM project and customized to make the the DCB application.

Web-based
All user interactions with the system (create, view, search, update, and delete actions) take place through the user's web browser. Users access HTML pages on the web server; clicking a button or link triggers a PHP script that sends a command to the database and returns the output as HTML back to the user's browser.

Open source
The DCB is built with open-source tools (Apache, MySQL, PHP, Symfony) rather than proprietary software. The underlying Qubit Toolkit code developed by the the DCB project is itself open source, with the source code freely available for use or modification as users or other developers see fit (under the AGPL-3 license). Therefore there is no cost to download any of the software required to run the DCB application.

Standards-based
The DCB is built around a number of international descriptive standards, including:


 * Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1


 * Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS)


 * International Standard Archival Authority Record (Corporate bodies, Persons, Families) (ISAAR) - 2nd edition, 2003


 * International Standard For Describing Institutions with Archival Holdings (ISDIAH) - 1st edition, March 2008

DCB supports Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) - W3C Recommendation 18 August 2009.

DCB supports Canadian Rules for Archival Description (RAD).

Multilingual
All user interface elements and database content can be translated into multiple languages. The current version of the DCB supports the following languages:




 * Arabic
 * Dutch
 * English
 * Farsi
 * French
 * German
 * Greek
 * Icelandic
 * Italian
 * Japanese
 * Korean
 * Portuguese
 * Slovenian
 * Spanish



Multi-repository
The DCB can be used by a single organization for its own descriptions or it can be set up as a multi-repository "union list" accepting descriptions from any number of contributing institutions.