Media Management System Architecture
Name
Christopher Willmore
Abstract
A commercial audio search service maintains a large collection of audio meta- data and related assets. The system architecture for maintaining the collection and the processes by which assets are submitted and retrieved are analyzed. Contemporary business conditions and stakeholder needs relating to the system are described, with emphasis on how they are not currently met. Guided by these contemporary requirements, a replacement architecture for the current content management system is proposed.
The current system was originally designed to support the manual process of managing physical audio CDs. Within recent years, vast digital audio catalogs with comprehensive metadata have been made available for incorporation into the system. Additionally, the audio search service began cross-referencing audio search results with offerings by digital retailers. The system has been modified to meet these changes of scale and function, but the overall architecture is regarded as fundamentally limited in its adaptability.
From stakeholder interviews a new set of guiding principles for the archi- tecture were derived. Process speed, schema flexibility, deployment flexibility and alignment with digital provider data models are key areas of stakeholder concern. From these requirements a service oriented architecture was developed.
The new architecture replaces the existing data ingestion pipeline of sched- uled batch processes with stream processing. A new metadata schema is pro- posed based on emerging industry standards for digital music distribution. NoSQL storage is adopted to support a flexible schema and scale. Empha- sis is made as to how the architecture is designed to be middleware and data platform agnostic. An example deployment on a commercial cloud platform is provided.
The suitability of the new architecture is subjectively reviewed.
Graduation Thesis language
English
Graduation Thesis type
Master of Science in Engineering (4+2) Computer Science*
Supervisor(s)
Luciano García-Bañuelos, Charles Henrich
Defence year
2012