Importing large resource files

Memory

Whenever a new revision is created for an object in IXIASOFT CCMS, a new copy of the file is created. This is how the content of each revision is preserved. Similarly, if content is localized, a new copy of the file is created for each language.

For DITA objects, like maps and topics, file sizes are small and they can be easily compressed to further reduce the file size. However, some file formats (like videos and images) cannot be compressed. And if a file is large to begin with (such as a video), each new revision duplicates that large file.

Because of the method IXIASOFT CCMS uses to manage revisions, large files (like videos) require a lot of memory for your Content Store. Even if a file is relatively small, having many revisions of the file can quickly use a significant amount of memory.

Performance

If a topic references a video or image file, the topic downloads it in the browser when you load the topic in IXIASOFT CCMS Web.

In IXIASOFT CCMS Desktop, topics and their contents are copied locally, and then pushed back to IXIASOFT TEXTML Server when released.

If users regularly embed large videos and images in topics, they may find that handling topics becomes slower.

Recommendations

Avoid importing large, non-DITA files into IXIASOFT CCMS where possible. Even for smaller files (for example, less than 2MB), repeated revisions and localization can duplicate the file many times over.

Instead of importing videos, the best solution is to store them elsewhere and link to them from topics. Users can embed an external reference to a video using an object element so that the video appears in the HTML output.