eRez Imaging Server 5.0 – Release Notes
10-Nov-2008
eRez 5.0 known issues and limitations
- This is an English language only release.
- The FSI Viewer 4 compatibility skins are not included.
eRez Imaging Server and FSI 5.0 - new features
This chapter lists some of the major new features included in eRez Imaging Server 5.0 and FSI 5.0.
Logistics
eRez 5.0 offers several major improvements in the area of logistics.
- Use of embedded or external SQL databases. eRez 5.0 stores a variety of information regarding media files, meta data, configurations, status etc. in an SQL database. eRez 5.0 includes an embedded, zero-configuration Apache Derby database which will be used per default. This Derby database can optionally be replaced by an external database such as MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL or DB2. The addition of a standard JDBC compliant database offers many advantages, including:
- Ease of integration with other systems through employment of the database as a new point of integration. External applications can read, and in some cases (and with great care), write information to and from the database.
- Many housekeeping tasks - including logging and statistics - are greatly simplified.
- Completely new management console, including:
- Support for all new features.
- Simplified license activation and reporting.
- An e-mail is sent to the administrator a few days before an license expires.
- Great looking "live" Flash-based charts.
- Improved reporting of status and internal queues.
- Easy access to warnings and system messages.
- E-mails sent are now logged and can be view from the management console.
- Tracking of downloads.
- Quotas on disk space, number of images and number of users.
- Improved error reporting.
- Support for alternative images in cases where a requested image isn't available.
Scalability and Performance
- RAM-based image cache.
- Optional "CDN Connector" license, offering automated integration with Content Delivery Networks and Reverse Proxy servers such as Mirror Image, Akamai and Squid.
- Numerous added performance and scalability improvements.
Installation and Licensing
- Automatic configuration of optimal thread and memory usage settings based on available CPUs, RAM and license restrictions.
- The eRez Server will now run on systems containing more CPUs than permitted in the purchased licensing agreement; however, the server will only take full advantage of the number of CPUs permitted in the agreement.
- A notification is sent by email to the administrator a few days before a license expires.
- Simplified upgrade from version 4 by importing version 4 configuration files to the SQL database.
Imaging and Media Handling
- Black Point Compensation greatly enhances the appearance of CMYK source images.
- Support for video and sound playback using Flash or Quicktime players.
- JPEG images can optionally be preserved on the server as JPEG files. eRez will create private copies in optimized TIFF format and use those for internal processing - but this process is completely transparent for the user.
- Preconfigured generic support for the 500 common file formats.
- Several PDF Splitter improvements including support for splitting multiple PDF documents in parallel and PDF metadata support.
- Several upload improvements:
- Support for ZIP files with non-ASCII file names such as Asian.
- Optional support for preserving folder structures in ZIP files.
- Option for allowing uploaded ZIP files to remain packaged, rather than unpacking them.
- Check for maliciously constructed "ZIP Bombs".
Localization
In addition to English, German, French and Danish, the following localized versions are being prepared:
- Simplified Chinese
- Traditional Chinese
- Italian
- Spanish
Additional miscellaneous localization improvements will be included as well.
Indexing and Searching
- SQL database keeps record of all media files and associated metadata.
- IPTC metadata can now be associated with any file format by means of external "side car" files and the SQL database.
- Improved searching for parts of filenames seperated by underscore and other special characters.
- Support for queries with leading wildcards.
eRez Web Interface
Major enhancements to the web interface include:
- New Flash-based navigation tree with on-demand loading provides instant access to very large folder structures.
- Integration of new FSI hyperlink editor for Pages and Hotspots.
- Integration of new FSI Pages overlay editor for easy insertion of video and other overlays to FSI Pages.
- Define and store FSI Pages "Chapters" directly from "Publish to Web", without having to manually create XML files.
- Option to store the current "Publish to Web" configuration as an "FSI Preset".
- Ability to write custom FSI configuration files etc. to the file system directly from the "Publish to web" pages.
FSI Viewer, Pages and Showcase 5.0
eRez 5.0 comes bundled with the new FSI 5.0 viewers. Major improvements to FSI 5.0 include:
- FSI Pages 5.0:
- New optional Shopping List plug-in product.
- FSI Pages Link Authoring. Web-based tool based on FSI Pages, enabling the user to author links in pages (square and polygons).
- Sticky Notes for FSI Pages. See figure below.
- Thumb bar and page markers. See figure below.
- New options for links (open product page, zoom page, zoom product, add bookmark, print, etc.).
- Optional "mirror" effect.
- Zoom function works on double page spreads.
- Links to related catalogs.
- New overlay editor for inserting videos and other overlays.
- FSI Viewer & FSI Showcase
- Print and Save dialogs in FSI Viewer and Showcase.
- Navigation in FSI Showcase to publish folders with sub-folders.
- Extended styles for dialogs in custom FSI Viewer skin including "close" buttons.
- New FSI Viewer default skins.
- FSI Cache
- The FSI product ZoomCache will be renamed "FSI Cache", now included as part of a suite of server side applications together with "FSI Converter" and "FSI Connector" (used for retrieving live data from FSI Pages from SQL servers etc.).
Miscellaneous
eRez is now fully compatible with Tomcat 6 which is also bundled with the Windows and Mac installers.
Discontinued Features
Support files for integration with Canto Cumulus Web Publisher Pro is no longer included and maintained. eRez 5 is designed to work transparently with the integration files bundled with eRez 4.
