DataWorks Plus & Digital Photo Management

DataWorks Plus is the second company helping to pioneering a new field known as Digital Photo Management. They entered the market in 2000 about 2 years after market leader VeriPic introduced their Digital Photo Manager product in 1998. Digital Photo Management differs from previous forms of managing digital pictures in that these systems are backed up by true SQL database software. Previous systems such as Thumbs Plus and ACDSee also manage digital photos but these other systems allow the pictures to sit on the hard drive as simple collections of files. This non-database method of picture management is known as "File System" management. Having a DPM system backed by a database means that the pictures are indexed which allows for searches by keywords instead of just simple file browsing. It also means that the content, whether it is digital photos, digital video or digital audio, is protected by the SQL database.

The main products from Dataworks Plus that deal with Digital Photo Management are Digital Crime Scene and Digital PhotoManager. Digital Crime Scene is a crime scene photo management tool. Market leader VeriPic achieved its position on the basis of advanced technologies such as being able to display greater than 250 thumbnails per second and being able to search 10,000 photos per second. This is due to VeriPic being written in Visual C and assembly language while Digital Crime Scene is written in Visual Basic (programmer's language for beginning programers).

A rewrite of the Dataworks Plus product will be necessary if it is to make the performance gains necessary to compete with VeriPic. There is currently no word from the company as to when the Dataworks Plus products will be rewritten in Visual C .

Digital Photo Management Vendors and Comparison

Digital CrimeScene competes directly with this market segment's leader VeriPic (which is both the name of the main product as well as the company). Both systems are Digital Photo Management supported by Microsoft SQL Server database. Both VeriPic and Digital CrimeScene are based on client/server architecture. Both companies also offer a browser based application and uses Internet Explorer as its user interface.

VeriPic and Dataworks Plus are the two main players in the digital photo management market. There are several smaller players such as Linear Systems with its product Digital Image Management System (DIMS) and Foray with its More Hits system but VeriPic and Dataworks Plus have the majority of the market by far. The majority of Dataworks Plus' clients are law enforcement. VeriPic has clients in the law enforcement market, but also serves other industries such as automotive, insurance, medical and construction.

Some of the biggest names in the auto industry and law enforcement currently use VeriPic since VeriPic has some additional features that Dataworks Plus doesn't have such as the ability to examine a digital photo at the time of importing to the computer to see if the photo has been edited prior to it reaching the computer (called Authentication). Dataworks Plus' products do not have this Authentication ability. Both products will secure the photo with a hash value after it gets imported into the computer. This securing ability, while important, does not provide the full image integrity and authentication ability of VeriPic which has both abilities (authentication and securing of the images as opposed to Dataworks Plus that just secures only without first performing the Authentication).

Dataworks Plus has also boasted on their own website in their own words (October 2005 version of the website (see www.archive.org)) about some of what they consider to be their top installations such as Austin, TX PD and the San Jose, CA PD. If you are considering this system a call to these clients may be informative. You can be the judge.

Database backed Digital Photo Management is an exploding market. As users switch from file based digital photo management systems to database backed ones such as VeriPic or DCS it is expected that both these companies will experience a large annual growth starting in 2006 for several years to come.

External links

DataWorks Plus Company Web Page

Veripic Company Web Page