Midgard is an open source persistent storage framework. It provides an

object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of " objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of p ...

and replicated environment for building data-intensive applications. Midgard also ships with MidCOM content management system (CMS) built on the Midgard framework. MidCOM's features include web-based authoring

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

interfaces and a component interface for installing additional web functionalities, including

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

s and blogs. Midgard is built on the GNOME stack of libraries like

GLib GLib is a bundle of three (formerly five) low-level system libraries written in C and developed mainly by GNOME. GLib's code was separated from GTK, so it can be used by software other than GNOME and has been developed in parallel ever sin ...

and libgda, and has language bindings for C,

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

Objective-C Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its NeXT ...

and

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. ...

Communications Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

between applications written in the different languages happen over

D-Bus In computing, D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus") is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project, ...

. The CMS functionalities run on the

LAMP Lamp, Lamps or LAMP may refer to: Lighting * Oil lamp, using an oil-based fuel source * Kerosene lamp, using kerosene as a fuel * Electric lamp, or light bulb, a replaceable component that produces light from electricity * Light fixture, or li ...

(

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

, Apache,

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

and

) platform. Midgard can also be used with PHPCR, the PHP implementation of the

Java Content Repository Content Repository API for Java (JCR) is a specification for a Java platform application programming interface (API) to access content repositories in a uniform manner. The content repositories are used in content management systems to keep the ...

standard. In early 2000s (decade) there was also a pure-PHP implementation of the Midgard API called Midgard Lite that has since been re-implemented as the ''midgard-portable'' project. The project follows the synchronized, 6 month release cycle that is implemented by several major open source projects like

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

and GNOME. Because of this, the version numbering reflects the year and month of a release. The version 8.09 Ragnaroek has been designated as a "Long Term Support" release. Especially the templating and page composition features of Midgard have received praise, earning honorary mentions in several CMS Watch surveys. It also got score of 42 out of 45 in the ''Celebrity CMS Deathmatch'' of 2009

Etymology

The name

Midgard In Germanic cosmology, Midgard (an anglicised form of Old Norse ; Old English , Old Saxon , Old High German , and Gothic ''Midjun-gards''; "middle yard", "middle enclosure") is the name for Earth (equivalent in meaning to the Greek term , "inhab ...

comes from

Nordic mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern period ...

, meaning ''Middle earth'', the world of humans. Most of the Midgard developer community comes from the Baltic region, and the project has been referred by CMS Watch as the Hanseatic League of Content Management.

History

Midgard Project was started in early 1998 by Jukka Zitting and Henri Bergius for a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

historical reenactment Historical reenactment (or re-enactment) is an educational or entertainment activity in which mainly amateur hobbyists and history enthusiasts dress in historic uniforms or costumes and follow a plan to recreate aspects of a historical event or ...

organization An organization or organisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is an legal entity, entity—such as ...

—Harmaasudet— as a system for them to publish their material online. Since the organization didn't have resources to maintain a large development project by itself, the open source model was chosen for creating a community of contributors to the system. The version 1.0 of Midgard was released to the public on May 8, 1999. It attracted a steady stream of users, and the development project flourished despite quite primitive early user interfaces. Commercial services for the platform started to appear in early 2000. One of the first adopters was Envida, a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

company that realized the potential of Midgard for

Web hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing we ...

purposes. First proprietary application for the platform was Hong Kong Linux Center (HKLC) Nadmin Studio content management system. In early 2000s (decade), Midgard developers participated actively in OSCOM, the collaborative organization for open source content management systems. This included development of shared content editing clients like Twingle and tutorials in various conferences. Midgard also featured in F.U.D., the Wyona Pictures documentary about OSCOM. First application not connected with

content management Content management (CM) is a set of processes and technologies that supports the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. When stored and accessed via computers, this information may be more specifically referre ...

was ''Nemein.Net'', a

Professional Services Automation Professional services automation (PSA) is software designed to assist professionals, such as lawyers, auditors, and IT consultants, with project management and resource management for client projects and utilization rate management for billable sta ...

application released in 2002 by Nemein, a

Midgard company. In May 2004 the Nemein.Net suite was renamed to OpenPSA and released under Open Source licensing. By 2009, some social web services, like Qaiku have also adopted Midgard as their content management platform. It also runs in organizations like

Helsinki University of Technology Helsinki University of Technology (TKK; fi, Teknillinen korkeakoulu; sv, Tekniska högskolan) was a technical university in Finland. It was located in Otaniemi, Espoo in the metropolitan area of Greater Helsinki. The university was founded in ...

and

Maemo Maemo is a software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's strategy to c ...

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managem ...

implementations with Midgard include the Movie-TV online video rental service. It has been used by New Zealand government for running the country's eGovernment portal. Midgard has seen some non-Web use also, including providing synchronization with the

Tomboy A tomboy is a term for a girl or a young woman with masculine qualities. It can include wearing androgynous or unfeminine clothing and actively engage in physical sports or other activities and behaviors usually associated with boys or men. W ...

note-taking application for Linux desktop. In addition to regular content management, Midgard is seeing use in special web application scenarios like Lufthansa's system for managing global marketing budgets and HP's client documentation system. The Midgard content repository library entered the Debian distribution in November 2010. Some parts of the history of Midgard are recounted in the book Open Advice.

Licensing

The Midgard core libraries and the MidCOM CMS are distributed under the

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

(LGPL), a license which permits the software to be freely used so long as it is dynamically linked or the user can relink it to new versions of the libraries. This is the same license used by the

GNU C Library The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project's implementation of the C standard library. Despite its name, it now also directly supports C++ (and, indirectly, other programming languages). It was started in the 1980s by ...

. This licensing scheme qualifies Midgard as

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

developed with an open source model. Official documentation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License which supports the free usage principles defined by the GPL for code. Applications developed using the Midgard application programming interfaces (API) can be

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

ed and licensed under any terms by their authors, enabling creation of commercial products and services based on the platform.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Midgard (Software) Structured storage Free content management systems Data synchronization PHP software Free software programmed in Python Blog software Free wiki software * Free computer libraries