MediaBin API Speed Issue

Hi,

We are using Mediabin 4.5.3

Using SOAP web calls from a Java Server to our Mediabin Server across a WAN.

We are using a persistent connection in our Java code to try an minimize latency.

In our application, we need to show a listings of all assets in a given MediaBin directory, and a few custom pieces of metadata about them.

Say the folder we are in has 200 assets. We have a for loop that calls something like

MBMetadata[] metadata = service.getAssetMetadataItems(assets[index].getMID(), metadataIds);

Our code is on a seperate tomcat server from the MediaBin server, so that means each webcall is taking around 150ms. With 200 items, that is in the range of 30 seconds to make the web calls.

Are we missing something, or is there some way to batch up all these calls and save 29 seconds? I don't see a way in the API to send in an array of assets we want to get back, and do it all in 1 call.

Our only thought so far is to change this code to run locally on the mediabin server, but we would prefer a web service call way to handle this.

Thanks!

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Comments

kg_brian

There is an api call for getAssetList.. which should give me SOME metadata about the items... but if I do a getAssetList, and try to call getMetaData on any item, I get null. Is there a way to configure which metadata gets returned from a call to getAssetList?

msnider

For your use case, I would suggest creating a metadata group with just the metadata that you are interested in displaying and then calling Search_GroupMetadata so that the list of MBAssets returned will contain only the metadata of your group. This option is somewhere between making a call to GetAssetList (which only returns a predefined set of metadata) and using a loop around GetAsset (which will return the entire list of metadata).

You should only need a single search criteria such as "Name exists" to retrieve the complete list of assets within a container.

Hope this helps,
Mark

Bill Klish

I see that there is a method accessible on an MBAsset object returned from the getAssetList method called getMetadata which returns an MBMetadata[] object.

That object is always null. Is it a mistake for that method call to be available, or do we have something wrong?

The core metadata like width, height, etc. are populated, but that is the extent of it.

This is MB 4.5.3.

msnider

No, that is the correct behavior when getting a list of MBAssets from GetAssetList.....only the essential image metadata is returned...the full list will always be null. You will get the full list when the MBAsset is returned from a call to GetAsset or as part of a search result (Actually, "Search" allows you to specify whether to return the full list of metadata; Search_GroupMetadata do so by design)

Mark

kg_brian

so I am trying to use the search group to return all metadata for an object as suggested. I have two issues in implementing this so far...

1) In the MediaBin web client, there is a metadata group in the dropdown list called ** All Metadata **. I want my search to return all the metadata, so this is the group I want to search. However to do a search with search_GroupMetadata you need the GUID of the metadata groupgroup. When I wrote a little program to connect to the web service and give me the GUID of all metadata groups, it only gave me the GUID of all the custom metadata groups - ** All Metadata ** was not in the list. How do I find the GUID for this group, I am not seeing it in the 4.5.3 API guide?

2) I am having trouble figuring out the syntax for a MBSearchConstraint. I just want something that will always return true (like that the asset name != null). Any examples or help there? A constraint has 3 properties I can set (mSearchOperator, mBooleanOperator, and mMetadata), but I don't see an example of them being used in the API guide. I may look at a newer than 4.5.3 API guide to see if maybe it is given in more details, but no guarantees the API is still the same in the newer versions.

msrinivas

For (2) of your question, there are examples available with the installation. Look up your web services installation directory.

msnider

I was under the assumption that you only wanted to show a select subset of custom metadata for each asset, not the entire list...which is why I suggested using Search_GroupMetadata. If you want the entire list, just use Search.

Mark

kg_brian

well I think it will be some combination of the two, showing the entire list could be a lot of bandwidth...

Looking through the example in the mediabinServiceSDK, and still unable to get a query built that actually does anything other then throw an exception

kg_brian

Got a search working, thanks.