The Convergence Project

Overview

CONVERGENCE will consist of a full specification and Open Source, implementation of the CONVERGENCE framework (middleware allowing third party developers to develop and deploy CONVERGENCE applications), a set of prototype applications demonstrating the functionality of the middleware in different business scenarios, reports demonstrating the scalability, robustness and security of the middleware, and studies from trials showing its applicability in real-life business scenarios.

CONVERGENCE will define specifications for the VDI concept and for the whole CONVERGENCE concept. More specifically CONVERGENCE will:

• Define use cases for CONVERGENCE system;
• Derive functional and non-functional requirements for the VDI and the CONVERGENCE framework;
• Specify the VDI including RDF-based mechanisms supporting semantic interpretation of VDI content and specific metadata required for the implementation of CONVERGENCE functionality;
• Specify a distributed content-centric architecture for handling VDIs by means of a publish/subscribe service model;
• Define a standard set of operations on VDIs, extending the operations supported by the MXM standard under development (ISO/IEC 23006);
• Contribute to the extension of MPEG extensible Middleware (MXM);
• Contribute to and extend the Media Value Chain Ontology (part 19 of MPEG-21) with Community Directory Service (CDS);
• Extend the MPEG-21 Rights Expression Language (REL) (e.g. specifying expiry dates for whole VDIs or for specific items of information contained within a VDI, support new business relationships), allowing producer of a VDI to express their grant/refusal of consent to the use of the VDI by specific users for specific purposes and allowing producers of a VDI to define actions that should automatically be executed under certain conditions.

READ MORE -> Specific Objectives