Arcitecta

You are here: Home / Products & Services / Arcitecta Desktop / Product Overview

Arcitecta Desktop is a web operating system for metadata and data enabling users, from individuals to distributed groups, to ingest, discover, and share any type of data.

Arcitecta Desktop utilises contemporary Web 2.0 technology, dynamically constructing menus, panes and pop-ups based on your underlying data.

Figure 1 - Arcitecta Desktop Applications

Employing a desktop metaphor, applications such as Asset Map and Asset Finder, are used to manage data.

Key Features

Discovery - simple, powerful web based search tool
Geolocation - location based display and discovery
Automated metadata extraction from data - metadata can also be added manually at any time
Flexible metadata management - definitions can be updated at any time on a live system
Versioning - earlier versions are automatically preserved when data is updated
Designed for large data - scales to billions of files and petabytes of data
Replication - data can be automatically shared to multiple systems
Federation - search across multiple systems, loosely coupled, exponentially scalable
Integrated with tiered data stores - data can be streamed to lowest cost tier
High performance - parallel I/O for ingestion and replication
Traceable - trace results back to source data
Auditing - all operations captured in an audit trail
Usability - Utilises drag and drop with visual feedback, context sensitive menus, mouse overs and tooltips
Access control - flexible access control based on hierarchical (actor, control, subject) triplet; access control lists and fine grain control to metadata document level
Integration - can integrate with any other system
Low cost of ownership with bounded and known costs and commercial grade support.

Asset Finder

Upload and download data, from a single file to thousands, from a single byte to terabytes
Package large datasets based on patterns defining which files to process or ignore, which to coalesce and which are related
Automate the flow of data with views, filters and favourites
Browse data and metadata
Deliver data to external applications and systems for transformation
Update metadata for one or many items in one operation
Annotate video (time coded), audio (time coded) and images, and search for data based on annotations
View previous versions of modified data
Export discovered data in XML or CSV format.

Figure 2 - Asset Finder

Use filters for searches and display results in your preferred format.

Asset Map

Location based data display
Location based data discovery
Use Layers to visually compare the location and distribution of data
Integrated geographical feature database
Export discovered data in XML or CSV format
Display maps from internal images, Google Maps or Google Earth
Spatial searches discover data related to a search area in some way (e.g. inside, outside, intersecting or covering the search area).

Figure 3 - Asset Map

Display and compare the location of data using Layers with different search criteria for each Layer.

Discovery

There are several methods to search for and discover data with Arcitecta Desktop.

The first few characters of a metadata element may be entered and a list of all matching metadata from selected collections will appear in a drop-down list. The list includes only items that the user is authorised to view. Any item from the list may be selected, and matching data are returned. Alternatively, the entered characters may be further qualified, or modified. This cycle may be repeated as necessary.

Figure 4 - Search suggestions are offered in real-time and subject to access control

Powerful structured searches can be constructed with just a few mouse movements and keystrokes by dragging one or more filter elements to form the search criteria. Searches may be constrained to selected collections.

Figure 5 - Construct powerful structured searches with drag and drop

Asset Viewer

Display image data - pan and zoom high-resolution images.
Add spatial annotations to images - the annotations, being metadata, become search targets.
Play and display audio and video assets - video assets may be played frame accurately.
Add temporal annotations to audio and video- associate an annotation (metadata) with a time code range.
Display other data types - application specific data may be displayed by automatically launching the appropriate application.

Metadata Library

Create and update metadata document definitions with a simple graphical tool.

Metadata documents are organised into namespaces, and authorised users can define and edit metadata documents at any time.

Metadata elements include a description, which is displayed as a tool tip when metadata is being entered or updated by users. Elements may be mandatory or optional, may occur one or more times, may or may not be indexed, and are assigned a type.

Figure 6 - Metadata Library Management

A web based tool for building metadata document definitions. A library of pre-defined documents is available, or documents can be created and modified as required.

Dictionaries

Create and maintain arbitrary look-up lists (dictionaries), consisting of terms and associated definitions.

Elements in metadata documents can refer to specific dictionaries, for example a metatdata element "Country" could refer to a dictionary consisting of a list of country names.

Access Management

Define and edit access for users, domains, and roles
Apply access controls to collections of data.

Data may be described by multiple metadata documents and each document can be assigned different access controls.

Figure 7 - Access Management

Set access controls for collections and for metadata documents, and manage users, roles, and domains.

You are here: Home / Products & Services / Arcitecta Desktop / Technical Details

Arcitecta Desktop is a client side JavaScript based framework accessed from a suitable web browser. Arcitecta Desktop is a package installed into and downloaded automatically from the Mediaflux server.

Arcitecta Desktop is developed with the Google Web Toolkit (http://code.google.com/webtoolkit). It is Arcitecta's own implementation and uses no toolkits. Libraries are available for developers to assist with developing their own clients or developers can add their own applications within the Desktop framework.

Figure 1 - Arcitecta Desktop Ecosystem

Supported Browsers

Supported browsers are:

Firefox version 3.6.x and later
Safari 4 and later
Chrome 3.0.x and later
Internet Explorer version 9 and later.

Arcitecta Desktop utilises HTML5 to render map overlays and, in the case of Internet Explorer, version 9 is required for this feature.

You are here: Home / Products & Services / Arcitecta Desktop / Downloads

For further detailed information about the various components that comprise the Arcitecta software suite the following Downloads are available.

Datasheets

1.2 MB	XODB Datasheet Overview of Mediaflux XODB high performance database.
1.6 MB	Mediaflux Datasheet Overview of Mediaflux Data Management Platform
2.1 MB	Arcitecta Desktop Datasheet Overview of Arcitecta Desktop

Partner Documents

350.6 KB	SGI LiveArc Datasheet SGI offers Mediaflux as SGI LiveArc. The datasheet describes its capabilities. References: SGI
1.9 MB	LiveArc QCMG Case Study The University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) is internationally recognised as a leading center for molecular bioscience research. SGI created a solution to provide automated handling and storage of data through each step of QCMG's process workflow. References: SGI