FAQ

Tedial terminology

Convergence is reality: broadcast and IT are coming ever closer together.  With convergence we frequently find confusion about the use of terms and jargons. The following list gives concepts and terms as we understand them at Tedial. We don’t claim scholarly authority nor do we guarantee the absolute accuracy of these terms, but we hope that this list will help you to a better understanding of our terms and the world we use them in.

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AST
Acronym for Abstract Storage System, Tedial’s intelligent HSM software.

BPM
Business Process Management is a system for controlling and aligning all processes of an organisation with its goals and needs. BPM is used for process optimisation aimed to increase production speed, reduce operational costs, preserve quality and improve the utilisation of resources available. BPM systems focus on human cooperation and coordinate work according to business requirements rather than technical processes. BPM systems often open the possibility of ‘reengineering’ the way organisations have traditionally worked in order to achieve improved efficiency. In the broadcast world, a fully functional and integrated tapeless facility is the prerequisite of an effective implementation of a BPM such as Tedial’s Ficus.

CMIS
Content Management Interoperability Services is a specification for improving interoperability. Coming from the prestigious OASIS global standards body which includes Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and IBM, CMIS provides a common data model and guarantees a vendor-neutral way of accessing and querying content from application to application while preserving metadata.

Cloud Computing
A mechanism for enabling convenient, on-demand network access of a shared pool of computing resources that can be provided with minimal effort from the users. The three most common deployment models are SaaS (Software as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service). Tedial’s Media Amigo is a file exchange platform based on Cloud Computing.

DAM
Digital Asset Management systems are designed to manage tasks and decisions surrounding the ingest, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets and their associated metadata. The term ‘Digital’ in the acronym emphasises the handling of files containing text and multimedia in various formats including documents, spreadsheets, images, audio and video. Tarsys can be correctly described as DAM system because it can manage non-video files as primary assets. Tarsys is also a MAM [see below] since its primary application is in the management of media assets.

Data Model
Software engineering term to denote the way a database is structured according to its intended use, which determines in which manner data is stored, organised and manipulated.

Data Mover
A system that executes simple file moving commands as ordered by a third-party media systems such as MAM, Traffic and automation. Data Movers are usually configured on predefined and specific media paths that cannot be easily changed.  Performance and efficiency largely depends on the commanding system and the degree of integration available with it.

Digital Asset
Any item of text or media that has been digitalised into a binary-source file.

EAI
Enterprise Application Integration. IT term used to define an integration framework used as a middleware to enable interfacing systems and applications across the entire enterprise. Tedial’s MPM is an EAI system enabling broadcasters to grow in a structured way avoiding ‘point-to-point’ connections developing across the organisation.

ESB
Enterprise Service Bus is a software architecture used for designing and implementing the communication among different interacting software tools. Its primary use is in EAI (Enterprise Application Integration – see above) of heterogeneous and complex systems.  Tedial’s MPM software architecture has been designed as an ESB to integrate the multiple third-party systems and technologies of a typical heterogeneous broadcast facility.

HSM
Hierarchical Storage Management is a storage system that automatically moves files among different tiered storage repositories. HSM systems turn fast disk storage into caches for the mass storage devices to provide efficient and fast file availability. IT HSM systems typically operate with centralised, policy-based rules to improve performance.

LTFS
Linear Tape File System is a format adopted by the LTO Consortium. It enables external databases and storage systems to independently access video and metadata stored in LTO-5 tapes.  Retrieving files from the LTO-5 cartridge is as easy as using a USB Flash drive: users can run any application designed for disk files against tape data without concern for the fact that the files are physically stored on tape. Tedial's AST (Release 3.0) supports 1:1 mapping of tape cartridges to file folders and tape libraries.

MAM
Media Asset Management is a subcategory of DAM (see above). A system for managing tasks and decisions surrounding the ingest, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of media assets and their associated metadata. This is currently the most widely used term in the broadcast industry to name content management systems employed for video and audio files. Although Tarsys is technically a DAM we follow the industry’s convention and also refer to it as a MAM.

MPM
Tedial’s flagship product name is the acronym for Media Process Manager.

News ML
Is an XML multimedia news exchange format developed and ratified as an open standard by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC). It acts as an envelope for one or more news items (e.g. combination of text, image and video files) using metadata to describe the relationships among the different items. NewsML has been designed to provide a format-independent structural framework that allows sharing complex media packages quickly and efficiently using a single cohesive bundle. Tedial’s Media Amigo supports NewsML for media and metadata exchange.

Object
In computer science an Object is an entity such as value, variable, function or data fields that can be manipulated by a computer program.

ORDBMS
Object Relational Database Management System is a database built using an object-oriented data model. The database schemas and search queries support objects, classes and inheritance – thus enabling detailed customisation of the way data is classified and identified.  Tedial's Tarsys (Release 4.0) is a MAM/DAM based on ORDBMS.

Point-to-Point
Integration based on dedicated custom links connecting two systems through a single communicating path. This rigid approach is not recommended by Tedial for integrating the multiple third-party systems and technologies of a typical heterogeneous broadcast facility.

SaaS
Software As A Service is a software delivery model in which functionality and its associated data are hosted centrally in an internet cloud and are typically accessed by users through web-based clients.

SOA
Service Oriented Architecture computing term indicating a system based on suite of interoperable services used by multiple, separate systems. A SOA integration generally operates with systems supporting web-based interfaces, typically in the IT industry. It’s difficult to implement standard IT SOA systems in a broadcast environment where interoperability is not the norm. Many of the systems used in a typical broadcast facility offer limited integration capabilities based on proprietary APIs, simple XML file exchange and database views.

UDT
Is a high-performance data transfer protocol especially designed for large volumetric files – like HD video files – over wide area networks. This makes UDT better suited to broadcast applications than TCP-based protocols like FTP.