Digital Information Gateway (DIG®) Technical Information
Digital Information Gateway (DIG®) is a data retrieval and manipulation tool that searches multiple information repositories – including any combination of databases, web sites, e-mails and user documents – simultaneously.
DIG employs a scaleable flexible architecture coupled with low administrative cost. DIG requires no customization to connect to most data sources and uses standards-compliant ODBC or native drivers.
The DIG architecture is broken into four distinct parts – the Presentation Layer, the Business Layer, the Data Access Layer, and the Data Layer.
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 The Presentation Layer is the DIG User software. This software is the user interface where all user interaction takes place. This software assists users in building and executing searches, communicates with the Business Layer to request and retrieve information, and presents search results to the user for further analysis and data manipulation.
The Business Layer consists of multiple services responsible for coordinating and handling requests from the Presentation Layer. These services include, but are not limited to, data filtering and manipulation, persistence, grouping and output. This layer handles all requests and returns from the Data Access Layer as well as the core business logic.
The Data Access Layer is made up of several stateless services that are responsible for carrying out the requests of the Business Layer. Connections to all information repositories are handled at this layer.
The Data Layer consists of information repositories. This can be any combination of databases, user documents, and/or web sites.
All communication in DIG is performed using XML and SOAP. SOAP allows DIG to communicate in the same fashion that a web browser communicates with a web server. This enables DIG to traverse firewalls via simple HTTP requests with no modifications to firewalls that already allow HTTP requests.
DIG, like other Visual Analytics products, is built on open-architectures and standards, like XML, making it easy to adapt, extend or enhance to meet the specific needs of virtually any application.
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