K-PAR also provides the protocol development expertise to seamlessly connect your storage device with the network. K-PAR is one of the most experienced software companies in writing file system software for managing connectivity between storage devices and the network. K-PAR provides mature network interface technologies and expertise in developing protocols, such as NFS and CIFS, for seamless, heterogeneous file sharing for implementing connectivity between mass storage devices and the network.

With several different ways to license the technology, K-PAR can come up with a solution to meet your needs. Pricing details are available on request from the sales department.

As optical and CD/DVD storage becomes cheaper and more widespread, a range of application developers are looking at using it to increase the capabilities of their products. These can come from fields as diverse as engineering (CAD/CAM), office automation (DIP) and broadcasting (multimedia archives). Developers working in these areas, while being experts in their own fields, do not usually have any detailed knowledge of how to interface to the wide variety of optical storage hardware on the market. They are faced with a choice of either trying to adapt their software to work an off-the-shelf package, or implementing complex interfaces and device drivers themselves.

The first option will almost certainly lead to a compromise solution, with both performance and functionality sacrificed in an effort to integrate the two very different packages; the second will involve the developer in a very long and costly development cycle, as they try to acquire the necessary expertise in optical technology themselves. K-PAR are very aware of these problems and in designing Archimedia, DVDcreation and other products have addressed the needs of both general users and application developers with more specific requirements. The way this has been achieved is to develop a highly structured modular product, with each component specific to a particular task.

The components all have well defined Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allowing easy integration with third party applications. These interfaces are written in C, allowing direct integration with packages written in the most popular programming languages, C and C++. Integration with other programming languages, such as Java can also be achieved by use of native methods.

K-PAR guarantees that future releases of the SDK will, as far as possible, maintain backward compatibility with past releases. Thus you can be confident that your packages will automatically gain support for new optical drives and jukeboxes as soon as K-PAR adds support for the devices (which often occurs prior to the official release of the hardware).

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CDR
The DVDcreation SDK provides an application with all the tools it needs to author CD/DVDs using the industry standard ISO9660 or UDF-Bridge file system. The SDK contains two separate APIs:

• ISO9660/UDF Formatter
• CD/DVD recorder driver and interface

The ISO9660/UDF formatter provides a powerful means of creating ISO9660/UDF file systems, optionally with Rock Ridge, Joliet or Apple extensions.

You can use it in a very simple fashion by copying files to a file system. However, if you need finer control over file naming and the directory structure of the CD/DVD, you can do this using the comprehensive range of functions available. This ISO9660/UDF formatter integrates seamlessly with the CD/DVD recorder driver and interface, for actual recording to the CD/DVDs. However, this interface also offers functions for examining the structure of existing CD/DVDs and for controlling the format of CD/DVDs recorded. Using it you can have complete control of the CD/DVD tracks and session structures, creating mode 1, mode 2 or audio tracks as you require.

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WFS
This SDK comprises of an optimized SCSI optical disk driver, along with an API. The API provides a set of disk management functions for performing tasks such as low level formatting, and bad block management.

The API can be used either with standalone optical disc drives or with jukebox discs controlled by the Jukebox Controller software. Also included is an API to K-PAR's WORM File System, a simple, write-once file system designed for use with WORM optical discs.

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JBC
The Jukebox Controller SDK provides access to K-PAR's Jukebox Controller Software. This software is at the heart of many of K-PAR's products, including Archimedia and CDfactory. It provides access to every disc slot in a jukebox, at both device and file level. For example, if you want to read file /kpar/systems.dat, and the disc is in slot 27 of a jukebox, you simply make an API call specifying the disc and file name.

The file access API calls are all modeled on the POSIX/UNIX file access functions, making it very easy to modify existing applications designed to access files on a hard disk. The jukebox controller software arbitrates between requests from separate processes to access different discs; a process will wait to read a disc until the disc is ready in a jukebox drive, at which point the process will continue. Also included are a comprehensive set of functions for determining the state of the jukebox and all its slots and drives.

Use the jukebox controller SDK if you want to simply access discs and/or files on those discs, without wanting to be concerned about managing loading and unloading the discs within the jukebox. The jukebox controller also provides a lower level interface to the jukebox robotics. Included is an API and SCSI for serial jukebox device drivers. The API provides a set of functions to perform explicit movement of discs within the jukebox. Use this interface if you want complete control of the jukebox from your own applications.

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XFS
Archimedia SDK provides total access to all of Archimedia's file access, management and configuration functions. Accessing files directly via the SDK is often more efficient than using, for example, the NFS interface, and allows much finer control over handling requests which may take time to complete because they require jukebox movement. Use the Archimedia SDK if you require a managed, cached, extended file store with your application.

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