History of Plato
What is Plato?
The planning tool Plato is a decision support tool that implements a solid preservation planning
process and integrates services for content characterisation, preservation action and automatic object comparison in a
service-oriented architecture to provide maximum support for preservation planning endeavours.
The software is licensed under Apache version 2.0 or later.
Plato 1 was released in November 2007. Since then we have been working on extending the functionality and concepts of Plato.
Since February 2011, Plato is also a part of the new FP7 project SCAPE.
February 2011: Plato and SCAPE
| We are now working on the SCAPE project which will run until 2014. Among the key expected results of SCAPE is an automated component that brings together repository operations and policies with content, action components, measures, and automated watch to provide a traceable lifecycle of operational planning. The automated planning component will build on the planning tool Plato and will substantially enhance its capabilities in terms of automation and scalability. |
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October 2010: Plato 3.0.1
A minor service release fixing a few small issues and updating the documentation.
July 2010: Plato 3.0
The main new features of Plato 3.0:
- Fast track evaluation Plato supports quick evaluation of preservation actions without having to create a fully fledged preservation plan.
- Executable preservation plan for EPrints Version 3.2 of EPrints is able to enact preservation plans created by Plato.
- Fits. We have integrated FITS, the file information toolset for further characterisation.
- Quality-aware migration services We have extended and further enhanced the tool registry containing quality-aware migration services.
November 2009: Plato 2.1
The main new features of Plato 2.1:
- Sensitivity analysis We have implemented sensitivity analysis to visualise criteria that are sensitive to variations in the weightings.
- Objective tree editors and knowledge base. We have redesigned the user interface for the objective trees and come up with a much easier to use and much faster editor for the knowledge base.
- Jhove. We have integrated JHove, including a neat visual side-by-side comparison feature for migrated sample objects to support visual evaluation.
- Quality-aware migration services We have made a prototype registry containing quality-aware migration services available through Plato, featuring automated evaluation of some of the requirements. These migration service measure quality and performance (time and memory) and provide this information together with the result. Corresponding publications about this technology can be found on the documentation page.
- Navigation structure. We have introduced a home screen providing a central point of entry.
- Executable preservation plan. Plato 2.1 creates an executable preservation plan in XML, which can be run in the Planets workflow execution engine.
- Service Integration. Updated access to Planets migration services.
- Scalability. Previously, it was not feasible to upload large sample objects to create a preservation plan, due to memory limitations. We have worked on this issue and are now supporting sample objects sets up to (roughly) 200MB per plan.
- Policy definition. You can now define your policies once and each preservation plan you create will be using these policies.
April 2009: Plato 2.0.1
This was a minor upgrade fixing a few bugs.
October 2008: Plato 2.0
| At the European Conference on Digital Libraries 2008, ECDL 2008, Plato shared the first prize for the best demonstration of the conference with the search engine Summa. Our congratulations to the Summa team, and we would like to thank everyone who voted for us! |  |
The main new features of Plato 2.0:
- Extended workflow for plan definition. The fourth phase of the Planets PP workflow, where a preservation plan is defined, has been implemented. A description of the extended workflow can be found here.
- File format identification. Plato now facilitates automatic file format identification with DROID (Digital Record Object Identification).
- XCL characterisation and automated object comparison. We have integrated the XCL engine and provide its functionality through the Plato application. It is furthermore possible to compare specific properties automatically between original and transformed objects using the Planets XCDL comparison service.
- Template and fragments library. A library of reusable fragments and templates assists the objective tree definition and reuse of recurring requirements such as significant properties of objects.
- XML import and export. You can export completed projects to XML files, and import them again.
- Detailed preservation plan. The preservation plan has been extended. Parts of the enhancements made to the preservation plan were motivated by TRAC (Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification Checklist).
- Online help. For the more complex steps, we have written explanatory help pages describing how to use the tool.
April 2008: Plato 1.2
Version 1.2 of the planning tool was released publicly in Spring 2008.
- Migration services. First migration services have been integrated, specifically CRiB
- Characterisation services. First characterisation services have been integrated.
- Improved documentation. We added a manual, sample planning content, and help pages.
November 2007: Plato 1.0
The first version of the planning tool was released in November 2007.
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