CAS Project Overview

The project is developing a portal application in Weblogic platform which contains many
content portlets.These contents are managed by using Vignette Content Management
System.

VCMS 7.3

WLS 8.1

Sun T2000
Solaris 10

Vignette Content Management System

VCMS contains CTDs and static files. The static files will be stored in the file system.

In VCMS the predefined Content Type Definitions (CTD) are

• Article
• Link
• Policy
• Image
• Navigation Control

The CTD contains visible data (Which will be displayed with the content when it is
retrieved) and metadata (Properties which are not getting displayed with the content.
These properties can be used to retrieve content from the database)

For eg: The CTD Article has two parts

Name
Visible Abstract
Body

LOB
Meta Data Region
Hierarchy

Projects – It corresponds to the directory in file system.It physically contains the

content.There is a one to one mapping between the projects and the content items.

Channels- Used for exposing the content.This logically contains the content.

Content Items/Instances

Lifecycle

The lifecycle of content is

Create  Approve  Publish

There is also another stage called Archive.

Stale – If we edit the contents which are already published, they will become Stale.

Stages of content

Live – The published contents will go to Live stage.

Management – It will contain the Created contents, Approved contents & Published
contents.

There is a Deployment agent which will move contents to the database.

Each of the content will be having a moID (Managed Object ID) as a unique id.

Integration between WLP 9.2 & VCMS 7.3

WLP 9.2 has an API for retrieving the content. But VCMS 7.3 cannot understand this
particular API .VCMS has its own API.So for integrating these two, some action steps
need to be executed.
• Whenever a new event occurs in VCMS(For eg. Content creation, Updation,
Deletion) the listener class at this side will call a servlet at WLP.It will pass the
parameters moID ,content/channel ,Event type & priority.
• The servlet will create a message and put it in a JMS queue.
• The first message in the JMS queue will be passed to a Message Driven
Bean(MDB).
• The MDB will call the Create or Update or Delete method in a java class called
CMService.
 • CMService class will call a servlet called CMS SPI at VCMS side.It will ask for
the details of the content which is having a particular moID.
• CMS SPI will return an XML file which corresponds to the content.
• CMService will pass this XML file for creating a node and finally it will be stored
in BEA Virtual Content Repository.
• From BEA VCR,WLP will retrieve the content using its API.

moID,content/channel,event type(Create,Update,Delete),
Priority

API Servlet Listener Class

BEA VCR WLP 9.2 AS API VCMS 7.3

Store content WLS 9.2 WLS 8.1

Sun T2000 Sun T2000

Solaris 10 Solaris 10

Create message
CMS SPI
CMService

Call Create or First Message

Upadte or MDB
JMS Queue
Delete method

Calls servlet and ask for the details of content by passing moID

XML File
Live stage Mgmt stage

Live Preview BEA Repository

BEA Repository

Mgmt Portal
Live Portal

BEA Repository has no logical separation of content like projects and channels in
VCMS.So it has its own unique id for each content instance. It is called UID.
So for each instance of the content (All instances will be having the same moID), BEA
VCR will give a unique UID.

Different portlet views

 List View Portlets – Shows a list of contents.

 Detail View Portlets – Shows details of a particular content.
 Navigation Portlets – Shows a navigation tree of contents.
 Site map – Shows overview of contents in the site.