Portfolio 9

Portfolio 9 was released at the end of June 2009, with a v9.0.1 for Win/Mac servers released in August 2009. There are 3 primary changes that this introduces:

• Portfolio Server now uses Equilibrium's MediaRich engine for its cataloguing and metadata work.
• All cataloguing is server based. The existing client - now termed the 'desktop client - cannot directly open catalogues anymore except if they are served. Background cataloguing (that was client based is no longer offered).
• There is a new 'web' client that uses an Adobe AIR web application (Flash 10 browser client needed) to provide some aspects of the client within a browser - i.e. no client install. It is intended for LAN/fast WAN (internet) connections; for slower internet access a local server should be used to host content. The web client requires no install per se but server access is controlled by a licence (i.e. number of concurrent web client users). The server has no limit on access save that set via the web client licence applied to the server. Desktop clients are still licensed in the client as in previous versions.

As a result of this technical requirements have changed. The most noticeable part being that Portfolio Server can no longer be installed on non-server Windows OSs. Indeed, Portfolio Server now generally requires a more powerful server. This is because all cataloguing is done on the server plus there are back-end server processes for the web client that use OS resources. As the cataloguing is more centralised, the assets should ideally be stored on or attached to the server (external drive or NAS, etc.) for most rapid access. The server is now administrated via a web page and several new ports are not used (re firewall settings).

The nature of the back-end change to Portfolio Server and its central role in the process make this more of a 'v1.0' release than previous point upgrades.

Apart from being unable to make/open standalone FDBs, the 'desktop' client is effectively unchanged from v8.5.

NetPublish is unchanged in v9 apart from losing the capability of publishing uploaded or local non-served catalogues. It is understood modules to allow things like uploading assets to the server may be added later in v9.x. whether they will be free or additional cost is not known.

Catalogue formats remain as the default FDB, or SQL in SQL-Svr (Win), Oracle (Win) or mySQL (Mac/Win) flavours. From v9, all catalogues use user-based passworded access. Pre-v9 FDBs without passwords will require passwords to be added before update. If level-based access is used, then four default users are created named/passworded as per the existing access levels and with scope of access as per those levels. Ideally, deliberate users should be set-up before upgrading catalogues to avoid confusion post update.

Web client functionality differences vs. the desktop catalogue are as yet undocumented. No manual is provided for the web client.

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Question: Portfolio 9 [FAQ00405.htm]
Last Update:- 18 August 2009

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