Mediaflux™ is pure Java, with some optional native extensions for administration on Windows based platforms such as installing the server as a windows service. Mediaflux™ will run on any Java 1.4+ compatible server. Mediaflux™ is tested and deployed on Windows 2000/2003/XP, Linux, Solaris, Irix, AIX, and Mac OS/X. Mediaflux can be installed on desktop PC's to support small workgroups through to high-performance computing (HPC) computers with hundreds or thousands of CPU's for data and compute intensive applications.

XML Metadata

All metadata is managed using XML, to ensure maximum system and application interoperability. The inbuilt XSLT processor allows dynamic generation of any other text format such as HTML, text, etc.

Client Requirements

Mediaflux™ clients may be new desktop or web-based applications and/or existing applications and systems.

Mediaflux™ includes a software development kit for creating thin and thick (including middleware) clients, transformations, content analysis and indexing, dynamic web-server pages and creating workflow processes. The Mediaflux API supports Java, Microsoft .NET (Visual Basic, C++, C#) and any web-service (SOAP) based client. Any command-line or shell based client application (e.g. Perl) can be supported using the Mediaflux™ command line tool.

Server Requirements

The specifications of a Mediaflux™ server system depends largely on the number of concurrent users and transaction rates. There are Mediaflux™ deployments on laptops that support a few users, while others are deployed on multi-processor machines to support hundreds of users.

Minimum server requirements:

• 512MB of RAM
• Pentium III (1GHz) (or equivalent)
• Sun JRE 1.4+

Supported Databases

Mediaflux™ version 3.x and later use our own embedded, high-performance native XML database for enhanced functionality, significantly improved performance over earlier RDB based versions and simpler administration and deployment. Mediaflux™ XODB supports typical database capabilities such as transactions, on-line backup etc. Mediaflux™ XODB provides even greater flexibility whilst enabling the system to scale beyond 10⁹ assets.

Mediaflux™ version 2.x can use any JDBC/ODBC compliant relational database to store metadata, provided the database supports transactions and nested selection clauses. If necessary Mediaflux™ can co-reside with existing database applications. Currently we support/test PostgreSQL, the 100% Java embedded database from Pointbase, Oracle, DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server.

Data Storage

Asset content (data) can be stored in one or more of:

• The same database as the metadata (zero administration)
• A specified file-system - Windows UNC paths supported
• A hierarchical file-system.

Network Requirements

Although network bandwidth requirements will depend on the amount of data exchanged between a Mediaflux™ client and server, Mediaflux™ provides XML compression for lower bandwidth connections. For example, there are some applications that connect to a Mediaflux™ server via a mobile telephone network and satellite phone.

Mediaflux™ supports raw TCP/IP, HTTP and HTTPS. Typically, all network traffic is tunnelled via HTTP or encrypted HTTPS to allow Mediaflux™ applications to operate through most firewalls.