Integrate Akamai SDK?

[defagos]

We heard from Markus Sollberger that we might need to integrate an Akamai SDK. The corresponding documentation is attached.

iOS_SwiftAPIs.pdf
iOS_AVPlayer.pdf

[defagos]

From what I see:

• The SDK is only concerned with analytics (this is why I opened the issue here). Since we are already collecting analytics in TagCommander, I don't see why we should integrate another SDK for the same task.
• The SDK is available in Swift only, which would put a burden on our library users.
• The SDK is not properly packaged (binaries are provided separately, not as a universal binary).

IMHO (but I may not know all the story), integrating this SDK would be a waste of time better spent delivering value to our app users.

[defagos]

It seems we need to integrate Akamai QoS SDK so that we better understand streaming quality. Do we really want to integrate Akamai analytics, or was this topic introduced because this is the same SDK?

[defagos]

We will need to integrate Akamai media streaming SDK, which can be downloaded using the following link, and following the associated integration guide.

[defagos]

I opened a repository to package Akamai media streaming binaries as native iOS frameworks: https://github.com/SRGSSR/akamai-media-analytics-ios.

[defagos]

The SDK is undoubtably poor and limited. All methods are class method.

I doubt player tracking can properly work with our flexible controller architecture: registration is performed with an AVPlayer instance, but unregistration is global.

Moreover, it silently fails if the configuration URL embedded within the app and not remote. We probably will apply the same configuration file as the web player.

[defagos]

Specifications exist. It would probably be better to implement analytics ourselves.

[defagos]

SDK events are correct when playing a single stream (open - start playing - close the player):

The events are Init, Start, Play and Complete, as described in the specification PDF.

As expected, events are not correct if several AVPlayer instances coexist (open - start playing - close the player):

We would have expected 3 identical event sequences, but instead we get Init, Error, Init, Error, Init, Complete.

[defagos]

The SDK memory profile does not seem bad, at least for AKAM-prefixed class. I have not precisely investigated whether those classes leak instances of system classes (e.g. collections).