Tera’s CMSA – A technical overview
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The Tera-specific client applications are Windows based. Third-party applications can run on any platform, provided that a Web services interfacing system is available.
The Web interfaces support the main browsers: Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari; as well as mobile devices like PDA and cell phones.
The system data model is described using a standard XML schema (XSD). The XML schema describes how the data is structured, and a system utility imports it and generates the necessary SQL and file-system structures.
The data contained in the system are categorized as ‘objects’ – e.g., images, texts, videos, folders, users, etc. Objects correspond to XML elements declared in the schema. Each object has a set of attributes (its data and metadata) corresponding to attributes or sub-elements in the XML schema.
The schema can be modified and re-imported at any time, allowing the data model to be changed on the fly. For example, add new metadata to existing objects, or add entirely new object types.
The use of a standard XML schema allows its manipulation with off-the-shelf tools (e.g. XmlSpy) and facilitates interfacing with third-party systems.
Tera’s CMSA can handle data files in a variety of formats: JPEG, TIFF, GIF, EPS pictures; PDF documents; AVI, MPEG videos; MP3, WAV audio, Office documents, XML or simple text files and more.
‘Handling’ means CMSA-based applications can recognize these formats and extract from them metadata and built-in information: IPTC headers, pictures sizes, video or audio durations, thumbnails and so on. All of this information is extracted in the standard XMP format, which is then used to create/fill the objects in the CMSA data store.
CMSA architecture has integrated support for automatic data processing and transformation. It is possible to define multi-step processes and execute them either manually – invoking them from a user interface – or automatically according to pre-defined schedules or conditions.
Third-party applications can interface directly to a Tera’s CMSA-based system by connecting to CMSA web services via plug-ins or extensions (either general-purpose or custom-built for the specific application).
To learn more about Tera’s CMSA, contact your reseller or Tera directly.