eCognition is a comprehensive image analysis platform for multi-dimensional image analysis. It contains all the client and server software needed to extract intelligence from any digital image in a fully-automated or semi-automated way.
The client software is role-based and supports the needs and skills of different users in an organization. The server software, known as the eCognition Server, is a processing environment that allows the batch processing of jobs and is hugely scalable, capable of handling tens, hundreds or many thousands of images in a single job.
eCognition Developer is a powerful and completely integrated environment designed for image analysis specialists to develop, test and package new image analysis applications. eCognition Developer can be used as a standalone tool or in combination with the eCognition Server.
eCognition Developer incorporates the latest generation of Trimble Cognition Network Technology®, enabling the creation of new solutions for multidimensional image analysis applications. It incorporates a new programming paradigm, high-performance analysis for complex multidimensional data and sophisticated viewing, visualization and registration capabilities.
eCognition Architect is an intuitive end-user tool used to configure and execute image analysis applications. It provides support for fully automated or semi-automated workflows and guides users through the application they are running. eCognition Architect incorporates all the required tools for users to import, view and visualize multidimensional images and results.
The eCognition Server provides a processing environment for the batch execution of image analysis using a high-performance grid computing environment. All supported connectors and drivers are described in a separate document called “Supported Connectors and Drivers”.
The Image Proxy Server (IPS) is a software component running on Microsoft Windows that provides high-performance image access and caching. A local IPS is installed automatically with each Trimble client.
The key functionality provided by the IPS includes:
The Image Proxy Server creates and manages cache data, which can be stored in a sub folder with the original data or in a centralized repository connected to the Image Proxy Server (local disk or NAS). This cache can be sized appropriately for your environment. It uses a combination of maximum size, FIFO and minimum and maximum retention times. This caching can also be turned off by updating the default configuration.
Trimble software is soft license-protected using FlexNet Licensing Technology from Flexera Software. The License Server is used to provide the available licenses to the software and can be used locally on a single machine or in a network environment.
You must install the License Server before installing other Trimble software. It can be run on any machine within the network that is constantly available.
The License Server can also be installed on the primary node of the Grid.
All Trimble products require an Intel x86_64 hardware platform (64 bit).
Trimble software has been validated for the following operating systems:
Pre-requisite libraries are required for each specific Linux distribution. These are documented in Detailed System Requirements for Linux Systems.
Trimble clients allow the display and analysis of a variety data types. Some features need an OpenGL capable graphics card:
To update your graphics card driver to the current version select for example the Device Manager in the Windows Control Panel. In the section Display adapters select your graphics card and navigate to the tab Driver where you can select update driver. Technical details and update executables can also be found on the websites of the respective graphics card provider. To check the OpenGL version installed on your machine you can also install an OpenGL viewer for example: http://download.cnet.com/OpenGL-Extensions-Viewer/3000-18487_4-34442.html or http://www.ozone3d.net/gpu_caps_viewer/ A dedicated OpenGL capable desktop graphics card from NVIDIA or ATI is highly recommended. Intel Extreme Graphics and integrated graphics may give incorrect results.
eCognitions user interface (desktop client) is optimized for certain screen resolutions and text sizes (Windows operating systems):
For other resolutions / text sizes, window sizes / toolbar layout may need to be adjusted and saved in eCognition > View > Save Current View.
All validated Microsoft Windows client operating systems can be used, see Microsoft Windows Client Operating Systems for eCognition Developer & Architect .
eCognition Server is a scalable grid computing infrastructure that may be installed on one or more machines in your network.
Each machine hosting components of the eCognition Server is called a node. A eCognition Server setup consists of a primary node and one or more processing nodes. While the primary node controls the operation of the eCognition Server, the processing nodes perform the image analysis tasks.
The Administration Console provides system administrators with a web-based interface that simplifies the management of the eCognition Server environment. It is installed as a central part of the eCognition Server and can be accessed by any machine in the network connected to the server and using a standard web browser.
The primary node hosts the infrastructure components required to operate the eCognition Server:
The processing nodes host the processing components required to perform the image analysis service:
If you use multi-processor or multi-core machines, you can set up processing nodes with more than one analysis engine. Each analysis engine should then have a dedicated CPU core and one eCognition Server CPU license is needed per analysis engine. It is also possible to install analysis engines on the primary node and use it as a processing node. In this case, the deployment server also acts as the configuration service for this machine.
The Control Service is a small component that runs on each node of the eCognition Server. It starts and monitors the other Trimble components of the respective node.
The communication protocol for the components of the eCognition Developer 8.9 software suite is SOAP-based. All ports used by the system must be available and properly configured with respect to virus scanners and firewalls:
Please see the Installation Guide for additional detailed information on firewall setup.
To process images each eCognition Server node requires access to image data files. This access can be either direct access using network shares or using the Image Proxy Server. It is recommended that the Proxy Server be installed as performance and reliability of image access is improved.
The following requirements apply to a single analysis engine.
The system requirements for the Administration Console are defined by your preferred web browser. While the console should work with most standard web browsers, it has been validated for the following:
The Image Proxy Server (IPS) software provides high-performance image access and image caching services. IPS software is installed by default with each client and is also installed as a server to support image access form processing nodes and centralized cache services to clients..
The Image Proxy Server is responsible for both serving image data but also creating necessary cache data to provide high-performance access.
The IPS can use the facilities of the existing eCognition Server processing nodes to offload the cache creation processing, which reduces the processing load on the image server . On Linux, this offloading of processing to the eCognition Server is dependent on having all the image drivers you wish to use available natively on Linux. Please see the Supported Connectors and Drivers documentation for details of which drivers are available for which operating system.
The choice of storage architecture for image cache data also affects the amount of disk space required for the Image Proxy Server. The default option is to use decentralized storage.
The License Server software provides software licenses to all Trimble products. It can be installed on any machine that is reliably available within the network domain that is used to operate the Trimble software.
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