The SICMA multimedia server and virtual museum application

This paper presents the SIGMA Multimedia Information Server that was demonstrated during the first public trial of the ACTS project SIGMA, which took place at the Natural History Museum of London and in the Gallo Romeins Museum of Tongeren (Belgium), from June to September of 1997. The demonstrator application, namely the "Virtual Museum", is also presented. The SICMA server complies to the DAVIC standard and is built on top of the KYDONIA multimedia information server. Core DAVIC Server Service elements (Service Gateway, Stream, Content, File) have been developed and the DAVIC User Plane information flows (S1 and S2) are supported. In this paper we describe the overall SIGMA server architecture and explain the main factors that lead to server design. We also identify the critical points which affected the overall system performance and determined the degree of compliancy with the accepted standards, such as DAVIC.