Railroad Repository 0.2

Railroad Repository provides a standards-based repository for large binary files.

Railroad is a standards-based repository for large binary files such as digital media, along with their metadata. It is designed to be easy to integrate with content management systems and other client software.

Many CMS’s are more suitable for document-style content than they are for managing large files. Managing such binary content in a CMS can result in scalability issues and deteriorating performance. Railroad instead is dedicated to the task of managing large files and their metadata.

Railroad can be seamlessly integrated into CMS’s, leveraging the open WebDAV protocol and simple HTTP messaging. While uploads and downloads of files are fully managed by Railroad and thus routed ‘around’ the application server, authorization of who can upload or download is still under full control of the CMS using whatever authorization scheme it needs.

Railroad allows multiple clients (such as CMS’s and DAM systems) to access the resources in the repository at the same time, thus keeping large data files and their metadata centrally managed and shared.

Railroad also makes management of file data on the filesystem easier for the system administrator. Railroad takes care to categorize files of a different type into separate directories. If a system administrator determines one file type is taking up a lot of space, it is simple to move this information off onto another, larger, partition. It is also possible to run multiple repositories in one Apache instance, or on different machines but using the same database.