Standardized multimedia retrieval based on web service technologies and the MPEG query format

In recent years, the growing number of digital audiovisual media files available over the internet or even on users hard discs is overwhelming. In order to support efficient storage and retrieval of those data, several comprehensive and rich multimedia retrieval systems (MMRS) have been introduced. Unfortunately, a standardized query format does not yet exist and almost every retrieval framework provides its own proprietary solution. Therefore, the ISO/IEC SC29 WG11 committee decided to contribute to this application by establishing the MPEG Query Format (MPQF). The MPQF is currently in Final Committee Draft (FCD) status and provides besides the standardization of messages from and to multimedia services also functionalities for service discovery, aggregated services and definition of service capability descriptions. In this context, the paper briefly introduces the MPQF and concentrates thereby on the management part. Based on this, a Web Service based framework is presented that realizes the management functionalities of MPQF. One of its central novel features is the distribution of a MPQF request to multiple multimedia services and the aggregation of individual result sets.