Definition

The architecture of commercial news systems is based on a layered approach consisting of the following layers: data layer, content manipulation layer, news services layer, and end user layer.

Multimedia news is presented as content of commercial services by national and international agencies and organizations all over the world. The news community is researching for solutions in different application areas, such as high level semantic analysis, provisioning and management of mixed information, and distribution and presentation of media data to satisfy requirements dictated by business scenarios.

Modern news networks, news syndication services, media observation and international news exchange networks are following the customer needs and provide specific services within the multimedia news application domain. The most-used presentation platform for multimedia news herein is the World Wide Web, providing all facets of news aggregation, manipulation, and dissemination as discussed in “Multimedia news systems.” Appropriate Web applications integrate multimedia services in complex environments [1] and modern web-based content management systems (WCMS) handle all assets of multimedia news data for personalized user-oriented news presentation.

Multimedia news systems typically follow a layered architecture approach as shown in Fig. 1. The data layer contains multimedia data that are stored in modern appropriate formats like NewsML for texts, modern image formats such as JPG, PNG, etc. and current versions of multimedia encoding (e.g., MPEG versions) for audio and video files.

Architecture of Commercial News Systems. Figure 1.
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Multimedia news systems layering.

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The content manipulation layer provides access to the multimedia data via specific tools that provide methods to control and access news contents along the various transitions in the content lifecycle. The news services layer includes gateways that provide structured and standardized access to the contents by end user applications. Within this layer, tools and services of content provider networks take care of the presentation and distribution of multimedia contents. Most providers run multimedia gateways such as streaming servers or web services and sites to present the multimedia contents.

The top layer presents the end user environment, providing access to multimedia news services based on direct access to multimedia gateways or special services of the news services layer such as multi-agency full-text search engines, semantically coupling services or commercially related gateways like billing servers or subscription access gateways.

Cross-References

Multimedia News Systems