How can we agree on some product agnostic repository function fundamentals?

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

General Track, "Repository Rants" 24x7 Presentations

The session was recorded and is <a href="https://connectpro.helsinki.fi/p9gn9h0dn49/">available for watching</a> (this presentation starts at 0:44:18).

While we at UCSD were working on adding Hydra to our locally developed (not Fedora) DAMS, it struck me that we got down to a few handfuls of necessary functions that were required to get the two systems to talk to each other. I'd like to rant about what it would take to identify the functions a repository really needs, then shut up and take notes as people throw ideas out and argue. There's got to be a way we can define a middle layer or API of common functions that are product agnostic. Maybe even architecturally agnostic?