FOXML is a simple XML format that directly expresses the Fedora Digital Object Model. As of Fedora 2.0, digital objects are stored internally in a Fedora repository in the FOXML format. In addition, FOXML can be used for ingesting and exporting objects to/from Fedora repositories. The Fedora extension of METS will continue to be supported as an ingest and export format. In upcoming releases, Fedora will also support other formats for ingest and export such as METS 1.4 and MPEG21/DIDL.
At the highest level, the FOXML XML schema defines elements that correspond directly to the fundamental Fedora digital object components (see recent paper on Fedora). Below is a brief sketch of these elements.
<digitalObject PID="uniqueID">
<!-- there are a set of core object properties -->
<objectProperties>
<property/>
<property/>
...
</objectProperties>
<!-- there can be zero or more datastreams -->
<datastream>
<datastreamVersion/>
<datastreamVersion/>
...
</datastream>
</digitalObject>