Digital library for technical documents (TDS) from various sources

One central location for TDS

A multinational customer, wants to create a centralized, cloud-based repository for managing regional and language-specific Technical Data Sheets (TDS).  The project has to provide seamless integration with downstream applications (eg a PIM, Salesforce) by leveraging modern storage and querying technologies. The repository will be used by different divisions,  hold documents for over 100k SKU’s and will act as the single source of truth providing always the latest available version.

TDS repository in the cloud

Coteng developed a robust, cloud-based data platform to meet the customer’s need for a centralized, cloud-based TDS repository with modularity, scalability, and flexibility in mind. The application is hosted on, and fits perfectly with the technology of,  the customer’s Azure environment. 

Essential features

The TDS tool has several important features, such as a repository, an API and a user interface. These are described in detail below.

A repository

A common cloud-based repository hosts all TDS document files from all regions in one unified structure. Tagging each file with meta data to identify region, language, product key, product code, last updated timestamp and URL for direct access. Multiple regions can be linked to the same TDS file to support a globally standardized product offering.

It contains a centralised index which is updated in real-time whenever files or metadata are added, or existing ones are modified. This repository is based on a combination of cloud storage for storing the TDS document files in a flexible, scalable and cost-efficient way and a database for storing the meta data and the document index to allow for dynamic and fast querying.

By building on this combination the repository has high availability and scaling built-in. 

An API

A REST API that includes interactive on-line documentation facilitates easy integration with downstream applications. The possibility to differentiate between which applications are allowed to only query and access files (read-only) and applications that are allowed to upload/modify files (read-write) is integrated.

The repository query is based on meta data and the modified timestamp.

Downstream applications are allowed to fetch the latest file index. This can be a file index of the entire repository, or an index filtered on any combination of metadata.

The TDS file and its metadata can be added or updated, keeping a change log to ensure traceability and updating the document index in real-time. On updating a TDS file the previous version will be archived for a configurable retention period and be available for download through the administration front-end web site.

Administration interface

An administration front-end website provides a maintenance and management user interface to the TDS document repository API and is made available as a tool to  employees responsible for TDS publishing.

This project was completed in 7 weeks from acceptance of the offer to deployment of a production version in the customers’ Azure environment.

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