Technical Factors

Abstract

Naturally, a book such as Practical Biometrics must include an overview of the associated technical factors, an understanding of which will be necessary if any success is to be hoped for with respect to actual implementations of the technology. The chapter starts with an in-depth look at the performance of biometric matching in general, explaining accepted performance metrics and how these relate to the real world. It extrapolates this to an exploration of end-to-end application performance, acknowledging other factors which will exert an influence upon realised performance. It moves on to look at application development and introduces the BANTAM application modelling language and the valuable part it may play in application design, development and implementation. The chapter considers interoperability and explains why this is important both within a single application and between applications. It discusses the various attempts at standardisation within the sphere of biometrics and introduces some alternative ideas, including the APEX equivalence of performance model. A logical progression of this thread then moves to infrastructural issues and discusses various architectural options open to systems designers and developers.