Architecture

Technical Architecture

The Pierhouse Digital Asset Library runs on Tomcat (or, in theory any J2EE-compliant application server), so it requires Java (JDK). It can be installed on a Windows, Linux or Unix server. All users (including admins) need is a web browser.

Tomcat contains a built-in HTTP server, and so can be configured to listen at port 80 – or you can install a web server such as Apache or IIS.

If you intend to install the Digital Library on a server that already runs a web server, e.g. for other applications or intranets, then you can configure your existing web server to work with Tomcat.

The Pierhosue Digital Asset Library stores asset files on a hard-disk and metadata in a relational database. The files are stored in a ‘repository’ directory, which does not necessarily have to be on the same server as the software (although of course the software needs to be able to read from it and write to it).

The Digital Library will work with any one of the following databases: MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle. If you don’t already have a license for SQL Server or Oracle, you may wish to consider MySQL as it is free. The database does not necessarily need to be installed on the same server as The Digital Library – the application connects to the database via a port.

The Pierhouse Digital Asset Library can be configured to integrate with Active Directory so that users can log in using their Windows usernames/passwords. To do this it needs to be able to access AD’s LDAP server via HTTP or HTTPS.

The Pierhouse Digital Asset Library licensing is on a per server basis: the software imposes no restriction on the number of users or stored assets.