CDAL: A scalable scheme for digital resource reorganization

Abstract

In many circumstances, including e-learning, there is a need to reorganize digital resources, scattered in many places, into a coherently accessible repository. This paper introduces a methodology to do the job efficiently. Specifically, the resources that the scheme needs to handle presents the following challenges, 1) mass, 2) various data types, 3) coming out continuously, i.e., the scheme must support incremental reorganization. 4) usually existing with its own directory structures. We describe the scheme in detail, together with considerations for trade-offs. The following features are highlighted: 1) the reorganization of scattered resources is modeled as a tree-merging process, which results in a good trade-off between efficiency and quality. 2) hierarchical storage arrangement with a uniform index at each level ensures scalability. As an application of the scheme, CDAL (Chinese Digital Assets Library) is briefed, which is a TB-scale archive of digital resources on the Web. © Springer-Verlag 2004.