Avain Technologies' X-Suite product family includes the X-Archive database, which is based on international open software standards and supports most demanding archive managements.

Digital archive management
Until now, most organisations have filed their document-based data in traditional manual archives or in several application-specific databases controlled by the same archive provider. This leads to problems such as a lack of efficiency in information services, access limitations related to the physical location of documents, downtime in archive monitoring due to manual processes, the incomplete implementation of document data lifecycle management, and the difficulty of integrating different applications.

Standardised structures

Avain Technologies Oy's electronic long-term archiving solution, X-Archive, allows organisations to set up and maintain application-independent, secure virtual archives which can be localized to the archive lagislation of any country. X-Archive is very flexible. In principle, anything stored in an electronic format can be filed. The archiving system's metadata structure is defined as an XML schema which is fully expandable and editable. Any standard, e.g. Dublin Core, can be used for this purpose. In technical terms, X-Archive is structured as a three-tier Java application consisting of an XML-based user interface tier, an archiving logic tier using the JDBC protocol with a digital archive formation plan, and a database which uses the most common relational databases. As X-Archive is based on open software standards, it is easy to integrate into customers' legacy systems, and other systems can easily communicate with the archive.

X-Archive is a modular information system, whose server is built on a Java-based component environment. The programme works in all environments which use Java 1.4. Database connections are modular and based on ANSI SQL. X-Archive can easily be transferred into any SQL-based relational database.

X-Archive is designed so that when necessary it can be installed into clustered systems or ones based on load balancing. The system's components can be put together or spread over several machines. Traffic can be managed using an asynchronous protocol, putting requests in a queue, which improves system scalability and reduces usage peaks. X-Archive is easy to adapt to take the necessary loads, to respond to the organisation's usage purposes, to provide the desired authorisation solutions and to include the necessary security levels.

• X-Quisitor3, a totally renewed archivist GUI. X-Quisitor3 provides lots of new features, such as improved class tree handling with a new archive as template functionality and possibility to define own process phases, actions and record types. It also provides customizable search criteria and faster searches.
• Improved administration utilities for metadata and policy management.
• New mechanisms for authorization and authentication for both X-Quisitor3 and administration utilities.

X-Viewer: a new X-Archive client utility from Avain Technologies.

an X-Archive client utility, which can be used to perform searches against QuickSearch definitions and to fetch and display records stored in Archive. It can be incorporated into other client systems or used as a standalone application.

X-Integrator : No limits for converting data between different systems

X-Integrator, a component developed for X-Archive, provides converting easily and quickly different formats and databases to structured format such as to XML or CDA.

Benefits of using X-Archive

X-Archive allows customers to establish an application-independent, digital long-term archive which fulfils the requirements of legislation and other recommended procedures. The system can be used for filing document-based data directly through automatic data transfers from the customer's operational systems, or for manual filing.

Thanks to the use of digital signatures, system signatures and automatic signature updates, the integrity and non-repudiation of the document data in the system are maintained throughout the archiving period. As it is an electronic archive, an audit trail is always stored of all actions taken in order to facilitate comprehensive monitoring. Archiving and archive management are simpler thanks to standardised classification structures and the form content of the archive formation plan, which can be adapted to meet each archiver's needs specifically.

In terms of archiving, the main differences as compared to traditional solutions are the opportunities offered by X-Archive for standardising the filing rules and usage principles, and the ability to manage the whole life cycle of archived data using built-in method descriptions. This means that for instance publication categories and deletion dates are saved automatically for each document, without a need for separate user actions.