Sajara - FAQ - Award winning web-based geographic digital asset management software

Capacity and Types of Media

How many assets can Sajara hold?

Sajara can accommodate 100,000’s of assets. The number of users that can be supported will depend on the specific hardware, memory, network and types of assets being stored. While Sajara can store images, photographs, sound, documents and video, the bandwidth and memory requirements are very different for each type of asset.

Azavea has had experience tuning our SQL Server-based applications for databases with millions of records and thousands of users. Sajara is designed so that it can run in a load balanced or web farm environment in order to serve a larger user community.

For databases with large numbers of assets, the greatest impact can be in terms of the user experience. Sajara includes a robust set of search, sort and display filter capabilities to reduce the number of records being examined on a given page.

Sajara stores 2 sizes of photograph (or 2 versions of other multimedia files) in its database. A low resolution file (100px wide) and a mid-resolution file (600 px wide).

What kind of digital assets can Sajara support?

Photographs, maps, audio files, documents and videos.

What type of media does Sajara support?

JPG, PNG, PDF, and many audio and video file types

Can Sajara handle very large high-resolution files?

Yes, Sajara’s database can store files at multiple resolutions simultaneously. For example an asset might have a low-resolution version stored for use as a thumbnail, screen resolution for display on the web, and a high-resolution version for use in making prints for sale using the e-commerce module. Some organizations wish to make high resolution media online while others store this media off-line to support order fulfillment and archiving needs.

How many users can access my Sajara-powered website at the same time?

Sajara is an entirely web-based system. As such, it is optimized for use in a web browser and to minimize network traffic. Actual network performance will be dependant on how often the users access the system, for how long they use it and on the relative network capacity. The Sajara software has been engineered to support deployment on multiple web servers and to serve thousands of registered users. The number of users it can serve depends on the size of the database and the hardware used.

Is there a limit to the number of institutions that are part of a consortium using Sajara?

Sajara has been designed to support multiple divisions within a single organization as well as multiple organizations within a consortium. This enables both metadata and lookup fields to be customized for different organizational groups. And when Sajara is used to support multiple divisions or organizations in the same database, each organization may have its own watermark, and users of one organization or division may not edit data associated with another group.

Integration

What options are available for integrating Sajara with other systems?

The Sajara system incorporates three different mechanisms for integrating with other systems:

GeoRSS – Used by many newspapers and blogs, RSS is a global standard for providing ‘feeds’ of news items. Sajara leverages this standard to enable visitors to track additions and changes to their search results. The RSS standard has been augmented by adding geographic coordinates and Sajara supports the GeoRSS format.
KML – Keyhole Markup Language is an XML protocol used by GoogleEarth, GoogleMaps, Microsoft Virtual Earth and other systems to transmit and display geographic information. Sajara supports KML in three ways: 1) by making every asset available as a KML document; 2) by making the first 100 results of each search available as KML; and 3) by making an entire collection available as KML for display in any system that supports the KML standard.
Search API – Sajara incorporates a mechanism for any external system to link to any search using web link parameters. External systems can link to any search result by transmitting tags, keywords, locations and collections.

Customization & Modules

Are metadata fields customizable?

Yes. Metadata fields are configurable by system administrators, primarily during initial installation and configuration. This includes assigning data types, lengths, labels, and whether a field is required or not, as well as defining values for display as pick lists. Customization of the fields is only available to users with the Administrator role, but all users will see the results of this customization. If a Sajara installation has multiple collections, fields can be defined differently for the separate collections.

Is the navigation menu in a Sajara-powered website customizable?

Yes. If, for example, your organization does not need an FAQ page or would want to promote a blog, pages can easily be added or removed from the navigation menu.

Do I have to purchase the E-Commerce Module when I purchase Sajara?

No. Sajara was built to easily add two optional modules if necessary:

Optional E-commerce Module - Supports credit card payments for digital, print and other output.
Optional Mobile Module - Enables access to the search application optimized for a handheld PC or internet-enabled cellular phone

Security

How can the origin of my assets be clearly marked, especially if my organization is part of a consortium using Sajara?

Sajara can automatically apply a text and logo watermark on each image as it is uploaded to the database. This protects the image from unauthorized use. Images from different collections can be assigned different watermarks.

Who can do what in my Sajara-powered system? How can I limit access to certain parts of the system to certain users?

Sajara currently supports five roles that provide different access to the system.

Anonymous – Any user, whether they register or not, can search the database.
Public – Default role for self-registering users. This user cannot edit metadata records but can save favorites, share images, purchase prints and search.
Contributor - Able to add and update assets in a particular Collection.
Editor – All permissions with respect to a particular Collection.
Administrator – Has all site permissions.
E-Commerce Manager – Manage purchase order process.

How is the security model implemented and managed for protecting images or categories of images?

Sajara implements image security in several ways:

Application Roles - The application supports separate roles for different types of users. General Access users cannot edit images; contributors can add and edit assets but cannot approve them; and so on.
Off-line Storage - The original images are not stored directly in the Sajara database. This enables individual units to store collections off-line, if necessary.
Approval Workflow – Sajara can be configured to support an approval process whereby a manager must approve an image record before it is made available to other users in the system.
Organization Security – Sajara supports the concept of Organizations. Each Sajara database can support multiple organizations. Further, each organization may have one or more Collections associated with it. Only users associated with a particular Organization are allowed to edit the assets in that Organization. This prevents business units from editing each others metadata and photos.
SSL Encryption – When the E-Commerce module is enabled, SSL encryption (HTTPS) is activated for all pages that are related to the purchase process as well as any data exchanged with the credit card fulfillment vendor.

Geography

What if all of my assets don’t have a geographic location associated to them?

The assets and the metadata associated with them can still be stored in the Sajara database. While they will not be able to be geocoded (i.e., assigned latitude and longitude coordinates) and therefore retrieved using a location, they will be able to be searched by keywords, tags and any metadata field of your choice.

How does Sajara deal with a collection that has a global geography?

Sajara’s geocoder is extremely powerful and can handle locations in every part of the world. Sajara is capable of using geocoding services made available by ArcIMS, ArcGIS Server, Google Maps, Yahoo, and Microsoft Virtual Earth.

Community of Users

How can I use Sajara to engage my constituents or members of the public?

Sajara has a number of features to promote interaction between people using the application as well as ways for the community to help improve the database on an ongoing basis.

For example, many organizations with databases of digital assets have more metadata records than they have actual scanned images or documents. One of the optional features is the ability for visitors to a Sajara website to include search results that are not yet scanned or digitized. With this feature activated, users are able to make ‘scan requests’, enabling a demand-driven digitization process.

We have also found that visitors to Sajara web systems frequently have very detailed knowledge about the materials being displayed. Every asset detail page has a ‘Report Error’ link that enables users to submit correction suggestions.

Other community-building features in Sajara include the ability to share photos, save favorites, build electronic newsletter lists and an optional, integrated blog that enables an organization to share stories with the public about assets stored in the database.

Does Azavea provide digitization services?

No, but we have worked with several organizations to implement digitization efforts and we will be happy to either help you implement an internal process or refer you to other organizations and businesses that can help you do so. Among others, we have partnered with the Center for Digital Imaging, Inc.