Understanding the Meridian Enterprise Server architecture

Understanding the Meridian Enterprise Server architecture is critical to effectively configuring and administering environments that include BlueCielo Publisher, Meridian Explorer, and Meridian Enterprise. The Meridian Enterprise Server system consists of several interrelated components:

• One or more server computers with Meridian Enterprise Server installed
• A database server running either the Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle database management system
• If documents will be published between different document management systems, the source and destination servers
• A web server running Microsoft Internet Information Services

The relationships of these components to one another, the components that reside on each and the flow of documents between systems are illustrated in the following figure.

The basic flow of data among the computers is as follows.

1. A scheduled publishing job runs on the Meridian Enterprise Server primary node. The job checks a database to find which documents need to be published. It registers each document found in the Publisher Queue.
2. Source system documents and their metadata are read by a system link and exported to temporary locations on the Meridian Enterprise Server computer.
3. If the documents are to be rendered to a different format, rendering modules run on the Meridian Enterprise Server computer (or optionally on other computers in the same cluster) and generate the renditions using AutoVue or the native application.
4. A system link imports the native or rendition documents and their metadata into the destination system.
5. After the link has finished processing the document, it provides feedback to the source system that the document was successfully published or that errors occurred during the process. Optional email notifications to interested users are sent through the organization's SMTP server.

Meridian Enterprise Server can be configured through a web application that runs on the web server. The Meridian Enterprise Server server and the web server can be the same computer in small to medium size environments. Meridian Enterprise Server stores all of its configuration and publishing job data on the database server along with user and group definitions and Meridian Explorer repository data. The Meridian Explorer repository can be viewed with a web application running on the web server.

For large environments, multiple computers running Meridian Enterprise Server may be configured in a cluster as described in Understanding Meridian Enterprise Server clustering.