Best Approach to Share Photos in Client Server Environment

[Former Member]

Ive been doing research on the best way to share scanned documents inside a client server application (PB11) but am not sure what's the quickest way to do it.

My brainstorm came up with:

1. Use MS SharePoint to share photos.

    Pros: Relatively quick to install

    Cons: Potentially difficult to maintain. No integration with PB application.

2. Use web server to share photos

    Pros: PB integration possible

    Cons: Difficult to maintain

3. Use Oracle database to store photos

    Pros: PB integration possible and easy to maintain

    Cons: Hardware resource demanding.

The idea is to be able to share scanned documents to different users which can be then associated with different business information such as journal entries, assets, customer application, and many others.

Of the three above which one would offer the quickest solution?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ron;

  Any or all of the alternatives you listed will work. The key question I would have for you is .... how will the images will be shared, categorized, searched, backed-up, etc? Answering these other type of questions might help you select a mechanism that is better for your implementation or longer term goals for the images.

Good luck!

Regards ... Chris

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

I have a Fujitsu software that can scan and store images to folders (may contain photos of assets, sorry for the mixup tween photo and image), sharepoint, but not to a web server - although now I suspect I can configure the webserver to just automap the file folders to the webserver's URL (I guess I had amnesia). However there's another feature which I haven't found out yet and that is whether the scanning software can store the metadata directly to the database. Most likely it doesn't thus the reason why sharePoint looks attractive. The other concerns you mentioned I believe I can handle at a later time.

Thank you.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ron;

   We do the same thing here at work also using Fujitsu software & drivers. Once the image is captured though, we can use ImageMagicK's "Indentify -verbose" command to extract the image's meta data and store that into the DBMS or analyze it further.

  IM is free & open source BTW:  ImageMagick: Convert, Edit, Or Compose Bitmap Images

HTH

Regards ... Chris

[Former Member]

I would not use Sharepoint for any purpose, ever.

[Former Member]

And why is that? What was your experience? I believe most scanning software includes scanning to sharepoint,, but none can scan to a webserver automatically with category/group folder. Thank you.

[Former Member]

Sharepoint is absolutely horrible when it comes to finding your artifacts once they are placed into the repository.  It also requires the use of MS browser and etc along with the associated bloat and long load times these 'tools' need.

[Former Member]

Hi Ronald,

I like a mix of #2 and #3. Store the photos on a server(s) and store the path to the images in a db. Storing the actual images in the db will become a major administration problem as you load more images (think backups, restores etc). Doing it this way will allow you to add space and or servers as needed as your file needs grow while keeping your db on a diet.

hth,

Mark