Fitch & Mather decided to implement an application called the Corporate Media Library (CML) to deliver the library catalog to F & M employees on the corporate network. In the next section of the BackOffice® Developer's Guide, Design Decisions, you will see how the developers made choices among the technologies available in the BackOffice Server 4.0 suite.
The goal of the CML is to provide users with access to the F & M library catalog without requiring complicated installation and configuration of client software. From a user's point of view, the CML is a Web application accessed using Microsoft® Internet Explorer. How this functional transparency is achieved will be laid out in the sections to follow.
The F & M management asked their developers to create a corporate media library application with the following features:
The following topics discuss the CML's requirements according to the different groups of users for whom the application was designed: