3. Outline... ● Recap – What is my project about? ● The purpose of this project ● What I set out to do. ● What I actually did. ● Summary ● Questions

4. What is my project about? ● Well the extended title says it all, really.. ● “Remote, web-based, real time control of scattered media stations” ● Remote – controlling something from a different physical location ● Web-based – control over a network (www or LAN, MAN, WAN etc) ● Real-time – the effects of your actions can be seen instantaneously ● Control – directing the behavior of ● Scattered – located in amany different areas ● Media Station – a device used for the dissemination of visual or audio media

5. What is my project about?... ● More about media stations: – The media station being controlled in this project is essentially a compact PC with a large plasma TV for its display. – Dom's project was all about how to control the screen layout of such a device

6. The purpose of this project. ● “A need exists for real time control of scattered media delivery stations, especially in the advertising industry, where up to the minute information and fresh content is very important.” ● “Our hypothesis is that a system can be developed that will provide real time control of one or more media delivery stations, using inexpensive and freely available tools.”

7. What I set out to do. ● Investigate some of the issues surrounding – a)the control of media stations – b)the development of a system for their control ● Develop a working system as a “proof of concept” – a)using freely available and inexpensive tools – b)in as short a time as possible – c)with a focus on later adaption of the system to other uses (in other industries)

8. What I actually did ;) ● Investigation: – General remote control of media stations ● Should have very strong security restrictions in place due to the public nature of such a system. – Control should be done by as few authorised people as possible. – All control should be directed through a central authority. – Changes should be logged and should include a reference to the user. – Changes should be easily reversable

9. What I actually did ;)... ● Investigation: – General remote control of media stations... ● All changes should be atomic and should obey good RDBMS behavior... – Any node is a distributed system can go down at any time, even halfway through a change – Changes must therefore happen atomically, or be reversed. ● The entire system state should be a reflection of a single data source. – A database of all system information should be maintained. – Changes to any part of the system should only occur in response to a change in the content of this database – This way, one can be guaranteed that the information in the database reflects the true state of the system.

10. What I actually did ;)... ● Investigation: – Developing a system for control ● Use good OO design principles! – Separate presentation and logic – Keep it as modular and generalised as possible – Facilitates later modification, easy understanding and easy expansion ● Use widely available technologies – Control should not involve complex software installation ● Be as hardware and OS 'agnostic' as possible. – Control should be quick, easy and available to any authorised user on any platform.

11. What I actually did ;)... ● Investigation: – Developing a system for control... ● Use a '3 tier' model – 1. Control interface – 2. Server/Databse combination – 3. One or more media systems ● The control interface should do little on its own, apart from talk to the Server.

12. What I actually did ;)... ● Investigation: – Developing a system for control... ● The Server should be the 'brain' and 'braun' of the system – It should listen to the control interface – It should change the database according to the control's communications – It should send control data to the affected media stations if the database changes sate. ● Use a common communication protocol between tiers and a common language for data storage

13. What I actually did ;)... ● Developed a 'semi' working system – Tried to stick as closely to my design suggestions as possible. – Used a 3 tier approach, but only managed to implement the control interface.

14. The control interface ● Decided to use an ebbedded application in a web browser – Chose to use a Java Applet. ● Why Java? – Large set of functionality through the standard libraries – Widespread technology – many people have the Java Plugin installed already. – No installation required – navigate to the page and go. – Strong networking support

15. The control Interface ● Follows the structure of the data as closely as possible (heirarchical) ● Reads and writes XML, using the fairly new Java API for XML Binding (JAXB) – How JAXB works

16. Media System Schema for the project 'Remote Control of Scattered Media Stations' Created 22-10-2003 by Roger Gordon

18. Summary ● Freely available tools can be used to develop a system for the real time control of scattered media stations ● I developed a partly working implementation of such a system

19. Questions?