Disclaimer: Proximity Corporation provided the information in this article and it was deemed accurate as of 30 May 2007. Apple Inc. is not responsible for the article's content. This article is provided as is and may or may not be updated in the future.
Artbox consists of a set of servers that communicate with each other by sockets (either TCP or Unix), and several clients. Each server is a single-threaded process written in C++ and using an asynchronous mode of operation. As far as possible all I/O is non-blocking. Artbox makes extensive use of the STL class and template library.
The major components of artbox are:
A server which handles the asset management role. It manages storage of media assets and metadata in the database. The storeserver is the main application server, in that most clients connect to the storeserver, and not to other components.
The Local Device Server is a server which handles communications with other devices and coordinates media operations such as transcoding. It knows nothing about the database. The storeserver sends requests to the LDS to perform device and media functions. It has implementations of a variety of network protocols.
To perform video transcodes, the LDS starts up a clipcopier process for each transcode job. The clipcopier can either run locally on the same host as the LDS, or it can be configured so that a number of machines are available for running clipcopier jobs, using inetd.
The Order Management System server manages most aspects of the workflow state of orders. The OMS is still in transition from the previous PHP-only architecture, so some functions are still performed by PHP talking directly to the database. The direction Artbox is taking is to move database-access functions to the OMS server, so artbox has a single point of contact with the database for workflow operations.
The main client for artbox is written in Java. It communicates with the Storeserver, sending requests and interpreting the responses.
There is also have a PHP client for artbox, so that artbox can be accessed via web pages. This is currently primarily used in parts of the Order Management system and the Newsroom system.
The newsroom plugin integrates with both iNews and ENPS newsroom systems, allowing news producers to both search for assets in the Storeserver and perform workflow functions in the OMS.
Artbox's pxmodel and database schema allows complete customisation of what metadata fields particular types of entities will have.
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