Arena architecture

Arena provides a way for library, archive and museum members to access and use the library, archive or museum management system (LMS) catalogue, and to communicate with other members through reviews, recommendations and star ratings.

To do all this, Arena has to be more than just a web application. For this reason, we chose to build it inside the Liferay environment.

LMS

This is the Library Management System - the software used to manage the library (or archive or museum). It may work with one or several databases (catalogues), locally or countrywide. Examples of LMS software: Quria, BOOK-IT and OpenGalaxy. Example of museum software: EMu.

ALMA

This provides the interface between the LMS and Arena. It pairs related instructions from the LMS and Arena, so that instructions passed between the two systems are understood and acted upon correctly. A different ALMA is required for each different LMS.

Central services (CS)

This is the component in Arena that contains the centralized services. It provides web services for the locally installed part of Arena, and may also have other components installed, such as fail-over and clustering features. Reviews, ratings and tags are examples of Central services.

Local Services (LS)

This is the core of Arena. It also provides the web interface with which its users interact.

Liferay and portlets

Liferay is the software foundation of Arena. It provides the environment for small applications, known as portlets, to run. It includes a range of ready-made portlet, which perform many common tasks. Many other portlets have been written to provide Arena’s features.