Case Study: Channel 4

Fintech Consultants were retained by Channel 4 Interactive to design and develop an electronic programme guide (EPG) component for use within Channel4.com/FilmFour.com and on interactive television (iTV) platforms. The brief encompassed the delivery of a high-performance, scalable component-based architecture that could be leveraged by other suppliers and C4's own staff.

Cross-platform Content Management

Within the overall architecture, there are several sub-components. The main TV listings component comprises a bespoke content management application, with interfaces to various XML-based listings feeds, with a high-throughput presentation engine capable of rendering listings in real-time on both web and iTV platforms. The EPG component is one of the most heavily used of all Channel 4's web-based applications and required a highly tuned design to ensure optimised performance capable of handling substantial loads of up to 1 million hits per hour.

An Industrial-Strength, Flexible Solution

The application was designed using Unified Modelling Language (sequence/class diagramming) and implemented entirely in Java J2EE running on BEA WebLogic against an Oracle database.

The component is composed of a set of JSP's communicating with the EJB-based business tier via a bespoke tag library. The component interfaces both internally and externally using XML (DOM/JAXP) with presentation transformed on-the-fly using XSL for added flexibility. In addition to providing web-based TV listings, the component also generates XML marked-up listings in real-time for playout to DTT set-top boxes.