Fitch & Mather (F & M) had its internal Information Technology department write the Corporate Media Library (CML) application to make it easier for the company's 4,500 employees to access the information they need daily. For more information about the business, structure, and needs of the F & M Corporation, and the range of library information available to the employees, see Business Problem: The Corporate Media Library.
The CML application uses the technologies of Microsoft® BackOffice® Server to deliver an interactive library catalog. F & M employees can search the catalog, check out books, and receive overdue notices. Furthermore, the F & M librarian can administer the catalog, adding and deleting titles. For more information on the ways the CML application uses BackOffice technologies, see Tools and Technologies in the CML and How the CML Uses BackOffice Server.
The CML is an n-tier Web application. General information on this development model can be found in N-Tier Development Model. For more information on the location of the CML's elements on the various tiers, see Designing the Three-Tier CML Application and Implementation.
The CML uses several COM components to execute its business logic. For information on the design of these components, see About the CML Components.
To present data more interactively and efficiently, the user-services elements of the CML use the Document Object Model (DOM) of DHTML, which was introduced in earlier Web browser versions and expanded in the current (4.0) generation of browsers. This design lets users choose both the content and presentation of requested information with a minimum of traffic to the Web server. In other words, use of the DOM enhances both the performance and the scalability of the CML. For more information on the design decisions that shaped the user-services tier as well as the rest of the CML, see Design Decisions.