Architecture
The TCA service is hosted on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure. The infrastructure is hosted on 3 separate data centres. The European data centre is located in Frankfurt, Germany, the US data centre is located in California, and the Asia Pacific data centre is located in Sydney, Australia. Each ‘Tenant’ (Account) will be hosted within the data centre closest to its proximity.
The infrastructure is Multi-Tenant and each Tenant has it's own API URL. For example:
- https://customerA.turnitin.com/api
- https://customerB.turnitin.com/api
Submitted documents stay within the AWS data centre they were first submitted to and are private to the Tenant that submitted them.
API Differences
TCA is a RESTful API that uses JSON notation. It facilitates the ability to submit a file, generate and view a report via the following API steps:
- Create a submission, (pass meta-data) to obtain a Submission ID
- Upload a file to the submission
- Wait for submission processing to complete (using webhooks)
- Request a Similarity Report
- Wait for similarity report processing to complete (using webhooks)
- Request Report Viewer URL to display Similarity Report
Functionality Differences
No Login Required
The TCA uses an 'API key' sent in an HTTP header to authorize calls. The API key is created from within the administrator area for your tenant. Direction to guidance on how to do this will be included in your welcome email but is also available here.
No Native Folder based Web Interface
Documents submitted via the API are not visible in a folder based web interface. A 'Statistics' page for administrators is available but it has a flat structure with minimal search capabilities.