Prepress Technology March 2000
SCC systems archiving
billions of bytes at newspapers
Staff Report
The problem is as old as mankind -- where to store personal property in an organized manner so that it can be quickly retrieved when needed.
Storing and retrieving billions of bytes of data that are the tools of the trade of the information age has become a large task.
Digital asset management is the buzz word of a time when many companies are looking for software systems able to handle vast amounts of words and voluminous catalogues of images. But despite a fair number of such systems coming onto the market, the conundrum for those in need of storage space is just beginning.
Publishing companies want software systems that can easily be integrated into existing editorial and production workflows. The product must show sophistication in its features without limiting customization abilities and support many different file formats without failures, according to Lee Funnell, vice president of The Software Construction Company.
For a little over two years SCC has offered a complete workflow management system suite of software in the form of MediaServer, which complements SCC's older software components MediaGrid and MediaFactory.
MediaServer, which operates on Windows NT with Microsoft SQL Server, incorporates search and retrieval technology from Verity Inc.
MediaFactory, which is a 32-bit multi-channel batch, is an application designed to process text, graphics and pictures originally transmitted from wire services, stored in archives, or saved directly from word processors or scanning devices.
MediaGrid, the cross-platform client, allows for dynamic searches of files and libraries for management of multimedia files. It allows users to define fields, dialogs and print layouts, as well as on-screen cropping, scripting and automation of Adobe PhotoShop actions. MediaGrid is designed for high-demand clientele, such as high-volume photo desks.
Users must have at least one server with dual 500-MHz Pentium processors and enough disk capacity to store high-resolution files (between 500 KB and 1MB per file in the case of images and PDFs.)
Ideally, disk storage should be in RAID. Users also need Windows NT 4.0 server software and Microsoft SQL Server database software.
Once installed, SCC's software promises to be the ideal solution for publishing companies for many technical reasons, but also for a number of practical search features.
For example, the software parses search fields allowing it to conduct extremely narrow searches. Each field from the header of a photograph to the byline of a story is parsed out and inserted into its own field in the database, allowing an editor to find photographs or stories taken by or written by a staffer named Bill Clinton instead of bringing up every file containing the name of President Bill Clinton.
The Verity search engine used in MediaServer also supports standard as well as proximity searches, meaning that a search for "Bill Clinton" will find only documents containing the two words together, while a proximity search would also locate documents c2ntaining, for example, "Bill Jefferson Clinton."
In addition, SCC's software has two modes for fuzzy writers or librarians. Searches can be conducted phonetically or can be expanded to include similarly spelled words.
With all that in its software suite, SCC's MediaServer has been installed at 14 newspapers in the United States, and eight more overseas. Users interviewed for this story had nothing but good things to say about SCC's flagship products and its complementary components.
Greg Anderson, senior systems analyst at The Seattle Times, said MediaServer's responsiveness to in-house custom tailoring was one of the reasons that made him and his company settle on SCC.
"The biggest reason was the flexibility of the database," he said. "Many systems do not allow the end-user customization that is needed, and is different at each paper. SCC allows me to make those changes, rather than continually pay the vendor to make the changes."
In the seven months The Seattle Times has been using SCC's MediaServer, Anderson said, he has added several new fields to the paper's more than 200,000-image database.
Past positive experiences with SCC products and word-of-mouth recommendations from a sister paper led the Florence Times Daily in Alabama to MediaServer 19 months ago. So far, Chuck Landry, Information Technology manager for the Times Daily, has no regrets. "We are impressed by the ease of use and how little manual maintenance is required," he said.
Mitch Toll, archive administrator for The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, which installed MediaServer 17 months ago and later at its two sister papers, The Fresno Bee and The Modesto Bee, said he and his colleagues quickly realized that SCC's products were the way to go to handle the three California papers' large databases. The Sacramento Bee stores about 150,000 photos and 700,000 text records on its SCC database.
"The two shining jewels in the crown are the MediaGrid client software and MediaFactory server-side software that manages traffic flow into and from the system," said Toll. "The depth of features in both applications, and the extent to which they can be tailored ... allow users and administrators to solve problems that would otherwise require expensive, customized software development."
All three systems administrators credit MediaServer with making everyone's work at their papers more efficient, including their own.
MediaServer and its components have brought the three Bee's closer together by combining images from a variety of places into one database and letting them act as backup in case of system failures.
"With our three newspapers on the same network, we can share photos between sites as if they were in-house by simply opening another window in the SCC client application," Toll said. "If the wire feed to one paper goes down, we have immediate backup access by connecting to the server of a sister publication."
When asked about shortcomings in SCC's software, no one could think of anything major, though Landry would like an interface from his front end system into SCC. However, all three were quick to point out that SCC's support staff is open for suggestions and quick with response times.
That leaves little to complain about and lots to be happy about.
"It won't bring me coffee in the morning," said Anderson in mock dismay.
Toll summed up his thoughts on SCC's MediaServer this way: "We were handed the tall order of finding one system that would handle photos, graphics, and text for three newspapers whose archived resources were to be shared. No other system we looked at came close."
The Software Construction Co.
770.457.7661
www.wcc.com