Introduction
The Infradox core software has evolved over the years to support the ever increasing requirements of modern day asset management solutions. There’s more to running powerful web based picture library solutions then most client facing web sites suggest. And in our vision, that’s how it’s supposed to be. We take care of configuring and managing all the server side software to guarantee worry-free and smooth operation. This page describes several of the most essential core components.
Infradox ISAPI
The software that produces the output for the web is a compiled ISAPI application. This application brings all the Infradox software together. It uses templates to dynamically produce the HTML, JSON and XML required to run the client facing websites, fast and secure. There is no slow interpreted script, everything is compiled machine code to guarantee the best possible performance.
Infradox Storage Broker
The Infradox Storage Broker software is a cost-effective yet flexible storage solution that enables virtually limitless storage capacity while offering maximum security and availability of master files. Our Storage Broker software also offers a means of sharing files between solutions, effortless distribution of files to remote locations and a central repository of file information.
Xpertise developed the Infradox Storage Broker software;
- To overcome storage limitations imposed by physical drive sizes and storage hardware.
- To offer scalability at any point in time by allowing the addition of further disks to expand existing logical storage locations.
- To maximize the availability of master files through online redundancy and automatic storage fail over.
- To be able to share high resolution files between web sites on our platform without having to duplicate high resolution files.
- To support dynamic remote storage ie files that are hosted outside of our facilities.
Caching software
We have developed a number of caching services to maximize web site performance. The system caches templates to minimize disk reads by use of our Template broker software. Database query results are cached by our Data broker software to minimize database access and to prevent unnecessary data parsing. We use Infradox Lazy writer to update the database in the most efficient way possible and Infradox AS can cache search results and meta data from remote API’s for super fast access.
Health monitor and Notification server
The servers and web sites in our hosting facilities are monitored 24 hours a day to guarantee a maximum availability of files and services and to notify us of possible problems before they arise. Our Health monitoring software has functions built-in to automatically recover from problem situations and to switch over to fail-over storage locations and application servers if so required. The web sites are continuously checked for life signals, storage locations are checked for space and availability, database servers are checked for response times and so on. Both Health monitor and Notification server are developed in-house to meet our specific requirements and to function optimally as an integrated part of our Infradox solutions.
Infradox FTPSend
Infradox FTPSend is a multi threaded server application that delivers files in orders to your client’s FTP servers. In addition to allowing your clients to download the files from their orders, they can submit a FTP job directly on the order page (provided that you grant the user such permissions). Delivery of the files is asynchronous so that it works as a click-and-forget system. The user can view the status on the order pages but the user will also receive an e-mail notification when a FTP job has finished so that there’s no need to monitor the status. FTP server details can be stored with the user’s account so that your clients won’t have to reenter this information the next time. Infradox FTPSend is multi threaded so it can send many files to many FTP servers (clients) at the same time.
Infradox Datamatic
Datamatic is a very powerful server application that is an essential part of our unique data processing procedures. This software reads the meta data – either embedded or external – of files that enter the system and if so required of files for which meta data is changed online. Datamatic analyzes your meta data and automatically processes its rule based actions. Executing of certain actions can for example depend on who the supplier is, how the data was supplied, what the meta data contains and so on. Datamatic can add synonyms, replace words with preferred terms, remove unwanted information such as e-mail and web addresses and much more. Below is a – by no means complete – overview of some of its functions:
Datamatic can be used to;
- normalize, standardize, clean up and enrich meta data
- apply territorial and other restrictions to files
- create filters for file type, orientation, rights, collections etc.
- link files to suppliers
- extract unique terms for refine search functions, tag clouds and live keyword suggestions
- aid automatic syndication processes
- create sets of files, eg to group sports matches, celebrity events, photo stories
- and much more…
Infradox Datamatic
Full Text Search engine
The Infradox search engine is one of the fastest search engines available. Our search engine can work with databases from different vendors, we choose to use industrial strength database SQL Server for our solutions. Our indexing and search system engine allows for dynamic updates, it supports search filters, Boolean operators, wild cards, fast phrase searching, diacritical characters, date range searches and searching within results. You can of course specify which database columns you want to be searchable.
Infradox Syndication Server
Syndication Server is a service application that is used to syndicate data and files to your content partners. It automatically publishes information about new, changed and removed files. You can have an unlimited number of subscribers to such changes. Only certain types of changes can be published and changes for only certain files. This allows you to syndicate only files that are available in a particular territory, with the exclusion of files that have a particular code and so on. Xpertise-ICT BV are using Syndication Server to automatically update the database of picture libraries that represent each other and that are on the Infradox platform. But we also syndicate data to third parties on behalf of our clients. Syndication offers your content partners full control of the data that they subscribe to, without duplicating storage.
Note that web sites that are running on Infradox AS don’t need to make use of inbound syndication because such web sites can use live connections with third party API’s instead.
