Certified Document Imaging Architechs

The CDIA credential is a consistent, objective way to evaluate imaging industry professionals. Corporate customers look for the CDIA credential when choosing image solution providers. Employers actively recruit CDIA certified individuals when hiring document imaging professionals. Increasingly, companies involved in providing or purchasing document imaging solutions adopt CDIA as part of their business plan.

The Certification is divided into content areas that correspond to Imaging Architechs' areas of responsibility. The technologies and areas emphasized include:

Identify common types of input devices and interfaces, and describe them in terms of resolution and other parameters. ~ Given input parameters, determine image size and indicate the impact on system performance. ~ Define OCR accuracy and recognize the factors that influence the potential accuracy of ICR. ~ Given imaging job requirements, determine the required capabilities of the input subsystem and specify appropriate input components. ~ Indicate how to optimize the input process with forms-processing and image-enhancement techniques. ~ Given symptoms of an imaging system problem, identify potential causes in the input subsystem.

Describe common types of storage devices, media, and interfaces in terms of features including capacity, performance, connectivity and shelf life. ~ Identify factors that affect storage device performance. ~ Given imaging requirements, select the appropriate storage devices, media and archive strategies. ~ Given an imaging scenario (including amount of images, access and archive requirements), determine capacity requirements. ~ Identify potential problems related to storage devices and their interfaces.

Identify common types of communications devices, interfaces, topology and protocols. ~ Given imaging system requirements, select the appropriate system topology and protocol. ~ Given specifications for a system, predict system performance. ~ Estimate the maximum segment length of each major type of network cable.

Describe the imaging display characteristics of monitors and image viewers. ~ Explain the impact of display system attributes (resolution, refresh rate, size, display type, ergonomic features) on a displayed image and on worker productivity. ~ Given an imaging job scenario (including number and types of documents, and purpose and frequency of retrieval), select the appropriate display subsystems. ~ Identify and describe common display-oriented image enhancement techniques.

Identify the output devices used for document imaging applications. ~ Explain the impact of output device parameters and point of decompression on print speed. ~ Indicate the impact of input resolution and other factors on output resolution and print quality.

Describe imaging-management methods, including those for caching, archiving and automatic indexing. ~ Identify the factors that determine when to archive images. ~ Indicate how to apply workflow in an imaging application. ~ Given an imaging scenario, specify an effective indexing scheme.

Identify the categories of information about project requirements that are needed to design an effective imaging solution. ~ Identify the categories of information that are needed to design a particular imaging subsystem. ~ Given a specific decision about an imaging system, identify the information that is relevant. ~ Explain legal and security considerations in image management. ~ Recognize the relative cost of labor and technical factors in an imaging system.

Identify methods for integrating an imaging system with legacy systems, current databases, and other existing applications. ~ Select appropriate tools to integrate document imaging with existing applications. ~ Given a description of an imaging system, identify potential conflicts between hardware and software components. ~ Given specifications for a system, select options that will increase imaging performance.

Describe methods for handling the conversion of existing documents into an imaging system. ~ Given an imaging scenario, select methods for implementing backlog conversion.

Define components of standard computing environments that are relevant to document imaging. ~ Recognize the main operating systems, network operating systems, and clients and indicate on which ones imaging applications can run. ~ Define the components of database management systems that are relevant to document imaging. ~ Characterize the relationships and potential incompatibilities between clients and network operating systems.