GNM_RCS_Octopus_Interface_TS

• 1. .Introduction

     1. Purpose

The document GNM_RCS_System_Interfaces_FS.docx is the functional specification that describes what business functions RCS supports in relation to its interfaces with other GNM systems as well as any external integration.

This document is one of a set of technical specifications that provide details of how those functions are implemented in RCS.

• 1. Scope

This document focusses on the Octopus interface. Separate documents deal with all other inter-system interfaces that pass data between RCS/SLM and other systems.

This document is intended as a high-level technical document outlining how the relevant business functions are implemented in terms of software modules.

Importantly, this document does not aim to provide the level of detail that would be required in a programming specification in areas such as program structure, detailed business rules, data integrity, validation, locking considerations, data security, and calls to/from other software modules, performance considerations, and so forth.

For details of program logic and coding, the reader should refer to the program files themselves.

• 1. .Octopus interface

     1. Background

RCS receives data about published images from both the website and the archive of print content. Often this information is incomplete, or insufficient to identify the party that supplied the image, or to identify whether this is a reuse of a picture published elsewhere.

• 1. Business requirement

The party that supplied an image must be identified in order to discern the rights GNM has acquired in the image, and also to determine whether a payment is due.

Knowing whether an image has been previously published can also help identify the supplier, and whether a payment is required: if an image appears in print and on the website then it only needs to be paid for once so it is crucial to know if it is the same image.

It is also important to know the internal supplier reference for images that have come from some of the large agencies such as Getty. This enables GNM to supply those agencies with reports listing which of their images have been used and thereby helping them determine who they need to pay royalties to.

• 1. Interface solution

Octopus is part of the production system. It stores details of everything that gets published via it, including the IPTC header of images that have been taken from PicDar. This header information includes data such as the Copyright owner, the Contributor, the Photographer, the Supplier reference. Octopus also has the PicDar reference that uniquely identifies a picture at GNM, and the contributor, caption and filename.

An table/view of the Octopus data is available for RCS to access these details. This table/view, called cms_octopus_mapping, can be accessed using an image ID, an image URL, or the PicDar URN. The columns of this table/view each contain multiple data items and so care is required to ensure the correct properties are extracted from within those columns.

The RCS software that queries this Octopus table/view is contained within the database package octopus_interface. The queries on the table return the following data:

picdar_urn

contributors

caption

filename

iptc_photographer

iptc_image_copyright

iptc_provider

iptc_picture_supplier_ref

When this data is found the record in RCS’s MATERIAL table corresponding to the image is updated, along with any other instances of the same image (which can be identified by having the PicDar URN).

End of Document