EDDA MEDIA - DYNAMIC ON-LINE CATALOGS WITH ZOOM

Software integrators Teknograd help media company Edda Media team become the major publisher of online magazines in Norway with over 80,000 pages online.

Background

Edda Media is one ofthe leading media companies in Norway comprising 41 newspapers, many local radio and TV stations and strong local and national web sites. ln addition Edda Media commands five printing companies and seven local distribution networks of circulars from retail outlets.

Edda Mediateam offers advertising campaign solutions for their customers focusing on the whole value chain from idea and photo to the final printed and distributed product. The company is especially strong servicing customers throughout the retail sector including some ofthe biggest supermarket chains and shopping centres in Nomay.

The Challenge

As one of the largest creators of retail circulars in Norway Edda Mediateam´needed an easy and if possibley an automated way to publish PDF files on the web for its customers. The software integration company Teknograd in Nomay accordingly developed a solution for Edda Mediateam using eRez lmaging Server and the eRez SOAP SDK to bring this requirement to life.

Teknograd delivers mission critical applications and solutions to some of the larget players in the Norwegian media sector. ”Our vision is to be our customer's best digital provider. To reach this goal we always look for the best products and for this reason we always recommend the eRez lmage Sever for projects involving image conversion and/or handling” says Peder Godvik from Teknograd.
Edda Media has processed more than 80,000 pages, and with a retail magazines shod life cycle of only a few weeks they need to be updated very fast.

The Solution

eRez builds on the concept of ”single source dynamic imaging”, enabling you to automatically generate an endless number of image variations and common file types from a single master image.The idea of single source was completely in line with the vision Edda Mediateam had on centralizing resources. ”With the combination of eRez and the FSl pages Viewer, enabling publishing of dynamic on-line catalogues with zoom functionality made eRez the obvious choice. No one else in the market offers a solution quite like this”, says Peder Godvik.
Teknograd developed a PHP front end with a SOAP connection to the eRez image Server. The solution also comprises a connection to an Oracle database storing binary data. The SOAP SDK is used to communicate with eRez through PHP, directing the eRez sonware to process PDF files by extracting an original master TlFF file for each page in the PDF file.

When users on the internet zoom into a page, eRez is actually extracting a variant of the master TlFF image on the fly and sending it to the User. This whole process is done automatically. The integrated eRez/PHP solution called ”Scoopet'' gives an easy overview of magazines that are created online. The whole solution runs under the FreeBSD UNlX-like operating system.

The Results

lnitially the conversion through SOAP of PDF files was seen as a positive side effect of the eRez solution, but with the vast number of pages to process this part of the solution has become a real ROl star. Finally the solution developed by Teknograd
has positioned Edda Mediateam as the major national publisher of online magazines in Nomay.

MICAH-CO have 7 years of professional experience in integrating legacy systems with focus on image server solutions involving SOA, SOAP, databases (Oracle, Firebird, Interbase, DB2, MySQL). Do not hessitate to contact us if you have any questions regarding this article.