Televisual: Asset PT

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Read how Televisual's customers use Asset to lower their cost of content ownership.

Asset PT

Asset PT is designed to bridge the gap between off the shelf content management systems and custom developments. It is a development framework for content workflow and management applications, and is the foundation of the current Televisual Asset range of products for publishers.

Asset PT is designed to meet three objectives:

To minimise the cost and time to deployment of applications
To minimise the risk of obsolescence
To accommodate growth and evolution of applications

Key to achieving these aims are database and operating system independence. Asset PT has been built entirely in C++, without the use of any operating system specific environments such as MFC. Consequently the initial implementation on the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server™ platform will port readily to other operating systems such as UNIX. It currently supports Microsoft JET™, Microsoft SQL Server 2000™, and Televisual FTF databases.

All Asset applications require the PT infrastructure, and the appropriate Application Packs. The relationship between these is explained below.

Key to the operation of Asset PT is the concept of a Web Portal Server and a Content Server. The Web Portal Server responds to HTTP requests from web clients. The Content Server responds to HTTP and XML requests from Web Portal Servers, or from other XML enabled applications. The scalability of Asset PT comes from the relationship between Web Portal and Content Servers. Both can run on one physical server. They can run on separate servers, and any Web Portal Server can communicate with any number of Content Servers, and indeed any other XML enabled servers and integrate the results.

For Asset applications to function, you need four components:

Asset PT Content Server Enabler
Asset PT Data Provider
Asset PT Web Portal Enabler
Asset Application packs

Asset PT Content Server Enabler is a software suite which runs on the server hosting the content databases. It is an XML enabler, responding to HTTP/XML requests from one or more Asset PT Web Enablers, or from custom applications and returning XML. Internally it has several components. At the top level is a Web Extension to the web service on the server to accept and dispense XML. Functionality is provided by a series of Command Listeners. The core Asset PT Content Server Enabler includes a number of command listeners for basic functions such as Query, Insert and Delete, and many Application Packs also include command listeners to provide application specific functionality. Developers can also create their own command listeners. At the lowest level of Asset PT Content Server Enabler is the Data Engine which connects to one or more data providers for access to content databases.

Asset PT Data Providers link the data engine to different types of content database. Each data provider is specific to a database type. At present data providers exist for Microsoft JET™, Microsoft SQL Server 2000™ and Televisual FTF databases. The separation of the data engine for the data provider is one of the keys to Asset PT’s database independence. It is in essence a “driver” for the database, isolating the API of the Data Engine from the API of the database, which is always brand specific. The data engine can communicate with several data providers, and each data provider can support multiple databases, allowing for very flexible scaling and integration of applications.

Asset PT Content Server Enabler and the Asset PT Data Providers run on one server, designated the Content Server. The third Asset PT component, Asset PT Web Portal Enabler can run on the same server, or on a different server.

Asset PT Web Portal Enabler is a web extension to the web service on the portal server. It accepts HTML requests from a web browser client, and turns these into XML requests for one or more Asset PT Content Server Enablers. The returned XML from these is then converted into HTML for display. Functionally, Asset PT Web Portal Enabler is a template merge engine, which will merge XML content returned from a content server (or any other XML-dispensing server) with a simple HTML template. The merge engine uses a set of tag and token “resolvers” to merge the page, and developers may create new resolvers to support other XML schemas, or other advanced merge functionality.

Asset Application Packs deliver end user functionality using the underlying Asset PT elements. Typically, and Asset Application Pack will consist of one or more the following:

A set of TVT files which deliver the end user application as HTML in web browser clients.
Custom Command Listeners which implement application specific functionality not available in the core PT infrastructure.
Operating system services to provide automated application features such as content acquisition.
Custom programmes interacting with Data Engine to provide management functions (e.g. MMC snap-ins)

Asset PT SDK

For custom development of Application Packs based on Asset PT, Televisual offers a software development kit. This includes a single user developer license (i.e. one developer working on one workstation) for Asset PT Content Server Enabler, all Data Providers, and Web Portal Enabler. It also includes documentation and examples of developing TVT based applications and custom command listeners. Deployment of applications developed using the Asset PT SDK require and end user license for each operating server for Asset PT Content Server Enablers, Data Providers and Web Portal Enablers as appropriate.

For further information on Asset PT please email Televisual or call +44 (0)1382 564200

Last Updated: Sunday 18 February 2007 - 12:04

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