Server Environment
PACE campaigns are a simple mix of XML plus ancillary data such as images and are packaged in a standard ZIP archive for download.
For simple applications, minimal technical skills and only a very simple toolkit is required in order to publish campaigns. For more demanding applications, we provide a range of tools for Java® servers that assist in ingesting, versioning, packaging and publishing content.
ZIP packaging and HTTP download
The PACE server environment is simple and lightweight: a campaign is packaged as a standard ZIP archive. The resultant content channel archive. is downloaded to the client using HTTP.
The choice of the ZIP archive format was driven the need to maximise efficiency. An entire campaign definition can be downloaded in a single HTTP transaction. Compression is excellent and can be tuned on a file-by-file basis. In addition, the client can download multiple archives simultaneously - minimising the number of HTTP transactions (each of which incurs significant overhead in terms of TCP session establishment as well as unnecessary repeated HTTP headers).
Ultimately, this reduces the power requirement as well as simplifying the implementation of the client.
Regardless of whether the ZIP archive is packaged by hand or by machine, it can be deployed to, and downloaded from, any HTTP server.
Publishing Tools
We provide a range of tools to assist in the packaging, versioning and deployment of a content channel archive.
- XSL Stylesheets for all XML formats
- Comprehensive XSL support is provided for validating PACE XML and View documents.
- Packaging from a Subversion Repository
- One or more content channel archive can be created directly from the contents of a Subversion™ repository via our Java® based tool. Note that this tool depends on the third-party SVNKit library which is licensed separately.
- Java® Toolkit
- Our toolkit includes comprehensive tools, with simple high level interfaces, for creating content channel archives including support for verifying, packaging and versioning, a mashup framework for downloading and processing information from different Internet sources as well as content channel templates.
- Java® Servlet
- A Java® Servlet 2.4 container that uses our Java® toolkit to provide a workflow engine for the creation of content channel archives. Workflows are configured using simple text files and make use of other pre-built workflows provided. The system automatically implements parallelism for workflows where possible, delivering high-performance for campaigns created on-the-fly. Using this system, it is a simple matter to build dynamic campaigns driven by Internet or other data sources including rich mashups.
technical benefits
The approach adopted for the PACE server is simple, efficient and scalable. Tools exist at multiple levels to assist in the creation of campaigns. A text-editor, ZIP archive tool and web server are all that is required to create a simple campaign. Complex, dynamic campaigns are catered for using our comprehensive, well documented Java® tools and workflow system.