Emerge Digital Archive was the first project I worked on that used a PHP framework. I had spent a lot of time researching frameworks to increase time dedicated to actual application implementation and enjoyed the lightweight, MVC nature of Codeigniter. The brief for the project was to develop a light-weight search and retrieve document management solution that could handle large amounts of scanned in images. I developed the initial proof of concept within a 5 week period while at the same time extending the Codeigniter core to build an application framework for rapid deployment.

The archive stores database data in a MySQL database whilst running on a dedicated Microsoft server box. Another challenge was the limitation of large companies with regards to application permissions. To overcome this I decided a web app would be best as all companies can easily allow access to certain websites without grossly compromising their network.

Another major challenge was the way browsers handle .tiff format image files. To date .tiff’s are not really a browser friendly format so we created a java service that puts the images through a conversion process into .png which is widely accepted. Other functionality includes the ability to handle user permission groups, mail groups of documents to a particular address, the editing of indexing information and the ability to see reports on the current status.

To date we store over 2 terabytes of scanned information with over 12 million active records and still going strong. A large amount of data is constantly being inserted into the system and it still stands strong.

I am very proud of this project and did all coding and database structure as well as design and web work. It has since been upgraded to include a new database and file structure as well as completely new interface.

Go to www.emergeios.co.za to see the applications

Demo login details:

Username: demo@emerge.co.za

Password: demo