When storing, retrieving, and selling digital objects, there are a number of architectures possible for configuration. The goal of this appendix is to go through a number of them and highlight how they work.
As the marketplace is still young, the experience gained from configuring optimal environments is yet to be determined, as technology advances the rules change. An optimally configured setup today, might with hardware upgrades or network changes, be deemed to be obsolete. The challenge is to develop a structure that can adapt and change as the technology changes.
The eight case studies listed here are based on real-life sites in countries around the world. The details have been generalized and simplified to make the underlying architecture simpler to understand.