XML-Based, Multi-Tier Communication

Architecting an enterprise-level digital asset management system, there are three fundamental objectives: scalability, flexibility, and extensibility. To facilitate accomplishment of these objectives, modern system architectures are generally partitioned into the following logical tasks:

• Information presentation, constituting the user interface

• Information administration, governed by business rules and procedures incorporated into application servers

• Information storage/retrieval, which is generally relegated to database management systems, such as Oracle8i.

Figure 16-1 shows this three-tier architecture. This is ArtesiaTech's massively scalable, enterprise-level digital asset management system called TEAMS^TM. It is designed and implemented on architectural underpinnings.

Figure 16-1 ArtesiaTech TEAMs 3-Tier Architecture for Digital Asset Management