Under the Hood: Insight from the Ironworks Technology Group

Oracle WCC - Helpful Site Studio Configuration Settings for Developers

This post focuses on helpful configuration settings that developers can leverage in their Oracle Site Studio environments.  This post is part of a blog series exploring best practices to consider when planning for and building a Site Studio website.  Unlike my Getting Started with Site Studio post, for this series, I’m assuming you’re already working and fairly familiar with Site Studio - which is part of the Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC) offering.

Configuration

The information below details some of the optional Site Studio global configuration settings that can be used.  Configuration changes are made from the General Configuration page of the Admin Server in the Additional Configuration Variables text box.

Note that if you choose to use any of the configuration settings below, a restart of Oracle Content Server is required.

 

• SSEnableDBSearchShortcut=1 

This entry is optional, but recommended.  It improves the responsiveness of queries performed by Site Studio Designer and Contributor.

• SSOnDemandEditorsThresholdCount=6

If you are having browser performance issues by contributors using the Contributor application and have a lot of editable elements per contribution region, then this config entry can be used to control when the element editors are loaded (i.e., either automatically upon opening of the Contributor application, or manually by clicking on the element).  For example, if this entry is set to 4, then if 4 or more elements exist in the contribution region, then an element's editor will not load until the contributor manually clicks on it.  Default value is 6.

• SSUseOnDemandContributionModeMenus=true

If you are having browser performance issues by contributors using the Contributor application and have a lot of placeholders on a page, then this config entry can be used to control when the menus for those placeholders are generated.  Each placeholder menu involves DOM manipulation and therefore the more placeholders that exist, the greater the CPU utilization.  When set to true, a placeholder's menu will only be generated once it is manually clicked on.  The default value is true, so if you see this config flag set to false and are having Contributor performance issues then you may wish to set it to true.

• SSUrlFieldName=FieldName

By default, the Content ID (dDocName) is the page identifier in URL’s.  Since dDocName values have some restrictions in length, a custom metadata field can be used to provide the URL page name for data files and native documents.

For example, if you have a custom metadata field called xUrlPageName, add the following config entry:

SSUrlFieldName=UrlPageName

Site Studio will then take the file portion of the URL and perform a search for a content item containing this value in its xUrlPageName metadata field.  If no managed item is found, a database table lookup is performed for a content item containing this value in its dDocName (Content ID) metadata field.  So even if you use the SSUrlFieldName config variable, the dDocName is always available as a URL page name component. It's important that unique values are entered in the metadata field.

• SSUrlPageNames=index.html

The default page name of a section is index.htm.  If you wish to change that, use the SSUrlPageNames entry to specify a comma-separated list of page names you want to support.  Using this config entry will make it so that you do not have to manually set the page name for each section of the web site.

For example, SSUrlPageNames=index.html,default.html,home.html

• DisableSiteStudioContribution=true

If this variable is not present or is set to "false", then access to the Contributor application is allowed.  This variable should be set to “true” on a production Consumption server, and not present or set to “false” on a Contribution server.  Default value is false.

 

For additional information on Site Studio configuration variables, refer to section 12 (Site Studio Configuration Flags) of Oracle's Site Studio Technical Reference Guide.

 

Related posts:

• Oracle WCC - What Is It and Why Would I Want to Use It?
• Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Managing Metadata
• Oracle WCC - Content Profile Best Practices for Developers

Oracle WCC - Site Studio Migration Best Practices for Developers

This post focuses on migration best practices that developers can leverage in their Oracle Site Studio environments.  This post is part of a blog series exploring best practices to consider when planning for and building a Site Studio website.  Unlike my Getting Started with Site Studio post, for this series, I’m assuming you’re already working and fairly familiar with Site Studio - which is part of the Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC) offering.

Contributor Content vs. Development Content Migration

A Site Studio website typically separates its Contribution environment from its Consumption environment.  This allows the Contribution environment to live behind the firewall, and the Consumption environment to live outside the firewall.  Also, a separate Contribution environment allows for file check in’s, conversions, and workflow approval to not adversely affect system performance which in turn would affect webpage performance.

Therefore, it is common to use the Archiver admin applet to automatically replicate workflow-approved content from the Contribution environment over to the Consumption environment.  Finalized production contributor content is typically contributed directly into a PROD Contribution instance, which is then automatically replicated over to the PROD Consumption environment.  That contributor content can then optionally be pushed down to QA and DEV instances.  This may be non-intuitive to developers who are accustomed to a migration strategy of DEV up to PROD.  However, developer content changes should always be made in DEV and then migrated up into PROD.

For more info, refer to section B (Replicating Your Site) of Oracle's User's Guide for Site Studio Designer.

Archive Replication

It depends on the organization’s needs of what content they need to push to other Content Server instances, but it is generally a good idea to set up at least two general Archives for replication: one for development content and one for contributor content.  The example Archives listed below are for a fictional site named ACME:

• Archive Name: ACME_Contributor_Content
  Export Query: xWebsites = ‘ACME’ AND dDocType = ‘WebAsset’ AND (xWebsiteObjectType = ‘Data File’ OR xWebsiteObjectType = ‘Native Document’ OR xWebsiteObjectType = ‘Image’)

• Archive Name: ACME_Development_Content
  Export Query: xWebsites = ‘ACME’ AND dDocType = ‘WebAsset’ AND xWebsiteObjectType <> ‘Data File’ AND xWebsiteObjectType <> ‘Native Document’ AND xWebsiteObjectType <> ‘Image’

For more info, refer to section 8.1.2 (Archiver) of Oracle's System Administrator's Guide for Content Server.

 

Site Studio Replicator

Use the Site Studio Replicator utility (installed on a developer's desktop along with Site Studio Designer) to get more granular control over the replication of the site hierarchy.

Whereas the Archiver utility would replicate the website Project File containing the entire site hierarchy, Site Studio Replicator allows you to be more selective and replicate only the section changes you want to move from one Content Server to another.  It also allows you to override environment properties of your site.

Note that Site Studio Replicator does not replicate content (such as Contributor Data Files, Page Templates, and so on), so you would still need to leverage the Archiver utility for that.

For more info, refer to section B.8 (Using Site Studio Replicator) of Oracle's User's Guide for Site Studio Designer.

 

Site Studio Definition Bundles

If you have a group of definitions and would like to copy them to another website or another Content Server, then use a "definition bundle" to do so.  These bundles are ZIP files that can be downloaded and uploaded from Site Studio Designer.

For example, if you select a Region Definition, it will include all Element Definitions and Region Templates associated with that Region Definition.  If you select a Placeholder Definition, it will include all Subtemplates, Region Definitions, Element Definitions, and Region Templates associated with that Placeholder Definition.

For more info, refer to section 9.12 (Definition Bundles) of Oracle's User's Guide for Site Studio Designer.

 

Related posts:

• Oracle WCC - What Is It and Why Would I Want to Use It?
• Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Managing Metadata
• Oracle WCC - Content Profile Best Practices for Developers

Oracle WCC - Site Studio Fragment Best Practices for Developers

This post focuses on fragment best practices that developers can leverage in their Oracle Site Studio environments.  This post is part of a blog series exploring best practices to consider when planning for and building a Site Studio website.  Unlike my Getting Started with Site Studio post, for this series, I’m assuming you’re already working and fairly familiar with Site Studio - which is part of the Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC) offering.

Fragment Naming

Refer to the "Fragment Naming" section of the following post: Oracle WCC - Site Studio Naming Conventions for Developers.

 

Fragment to Fragment Library Associations

When you create a Fragment, it must belong to a Fragment Library.  Therefore a Fragment Library may have one or more Fragments associated with it.

 

Figure A-82 from Oracle's User's Guide for Site Studio Designer

 

When determining which Fragment Libraries should be associated with each Fragment, it may sometimes be best to only have one Fragment belonging to a Fragment Library for development purposes.  This is because when a Fragment is opened in Site Studio Designer, the entire Fragment Library it is associated with is checked out in Content Server.  This means that no one else will be able to edit any Fragments that belong to a Fragment Library if someone else has any of those Fragments open belonging to the same Fragment Library.

Note, however, that it can still make sense from a design perspective to associate multiple Fragments with a single Fragment Library.  For example, “Header” and “Footer” Fragments typically belong to the same Fragment Library.

So it's up to your organization to find the right balance that works for you.  I have typically seen a mixed approach, where some Fragment Libraries contain multiple Fragments, and some have a one-to-one mapping of Fragment-to-Fragment-Library.

Fragment Assets

It is possible for code within a Fragment to reference content items in Content Server, but you also have the option to locally specify files (assets) to be bundled directly with the Fragment (typically images, CSS, and JavaScript).  It is generally recommended to only bundle assets directly into a Fragment if:

• They are files that do not need to be managed as separate content items and do not need to go through a Workflow approval process.


• If it's a file that is specific only to this Fragment.  If it needs to be reused elsewhere then it should be a separately managed piece of content outside of the Fragment.


• If a JavaScript or CSS file uses relative (rather than absolute) URL paths to other files, then bundling those JavaScript, CSS, and Image files as Assets within the Fragment will allow the relative URL references to work (since all Fragment code gets placed in the same spot out in the weblayout directory).

Fragment Snippets

It is generally recommended to specify an Include option of “reference” for a Fragment snippet since that allows for the greatest flexibility and reusability (instead of “simple” or “inline”).  When a “reference” Include option is specified, you can make changes to the Fragment snippet from the Fragment Editor in Site Studio Designer and that change will automatically be seen across all templates that reference that Fragment snippet.

 

Figure 13–2 of Oracle's User's Guide for Site Studio Designer

 

Also, Fragment snippets can designate a location of head, drop-point, top-of-body, or bottom-of-body.  Note that if a Fragment has a "head" location then it can only be used in Page Templates, since that's the only template that has a <HEAD> tag (i.e., the Fragment wouldn't work from a Subtemplate or Region Template).  Section 13.3 (Fragment Handling in Templates) of the Oracle User’s Guide for Site Studio Designer recommends "you create fragments with a single body snippet. The fragment can then be used in any situation, whether it is on a page template, a subtemplate, or a region template."

 

Related posts:

• Oracle WCC - What Is It and Why Would I Want to Use It?
• Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Managing Metadata
• Oracle WCC - Content Profile Best Practices for Developers

Oracle WCC - Site Studio Page Development Best Practices

This post focuses on page development best practices that developers can leverage in their Oracle Site Studio environments.  This post is part of a blog series exploring best practices to consider when planning for and building a Site Studio website.  Unlike my Getting Started with Site Studio post, for this series, I’m assuming you’re already working and fairly familiar with Site Studio - which is part of the Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC) offering.

 

Reuse Site Assets When Possible

The Site Studio architecture is built for site asset reuse.  Content items should be reused when possible, which can allow for simplified development and maintenance.

For example, if you have a Plaintext Element whose functionality is the same across multiple websites, then you could create a generic Plaintext Element and reference that single element from all of the sites instead of creating site-specific versions of it.

Another example where site asset reuse can be used is for Page Templates.  It is typically a good practice to keep the number of Page Templates as low as possible, and you can do so by having a main Page Template that references a Placeholder, which in turn would have a listing of Subtemplates that can be used based on the site section.  Each Subtemplate would then have its own Placeholder, thereby allowing you to control the assigning of Contributor Data Files to contribution regions based on the site section.

For example:

• Assume a site has 1 Page Template with a Content ID of COMMON_PAGE_TEMPLATE


• Assume that there are 5 main sections to the site, where 4 of those site sections (Products, Services, Downloads, and Documentation) can share the same template and the remaining site section (About) would require its own unique template


• Therefore, you could create 2 Subtemplates (one to be shared by 4 of the sections, and one unique to the remaining section): COMMON_SUBTEMPLATE and ABOUT_SUBTEMPLATE


• You could then have 2 Placeholder Definitions: COMMON_PLACEHOLDER and MAIN_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER.
  • For the COMMON_PLACEHOLDER, you would assign it the 2 Subtemplates, reference that Placeholder from the COMMON_PAGE_TEMPLATE (e.g., via the wcmPlaceholder tag), and then choose which Subtemplate to assign based on the site section
  • As for the remaining MAIN_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER, you would reference that Placeholder from the 2 Subtemplates and associate a Contributor Data File to it based on the site section
• You could then create your Region Definitions and corresponding Region Templates and assign all of them to the MAIN_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER (note that Site Studio will know which Region Template to use to draw out the page snippet because each Contributor Data File is tagged with an xRegionDefinition metadata value, which it would find under the MAIN_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER, which would then in turn map to the appropriate Region Template)

 

Use Fragments for Reusable Chunks of Code

Site Studio Fragments are a great place to store reusable code that can then be referenced from your templates.

For example:

• It is common to create a Header Fragment that stores common CSS and JavaScript includes, which can then be referenced in the <HEAD> section of your Page Template


• You can also have a common Navigation Fragment that can be placed near the top of the <BODY> section


• And a Footer Fragment that can be placed right before the ending </BODY> tag of the Page Template

This allows you to make a central change to a Fragment and have that change seen by every page based on the template that references it.

For more info, refer to the following post: Oracle WCC - Site Studio Fragment Best Practices for Developers.

 

XHTML Compliance

If your webpages need to be XHTML compliant, potential XHTML validation errors and corresponding solutions are listed below for your Site Studio Page Templates:

• Validation Error: Missing xmlns attribute for element html
  Solution: Add the following attribute to the <html> tag:

xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"

• Validation Error: there is no attribute "warning"
  Solution: Delete the warning attribute from the <ssinfo> tag

• Validation Error: element "ssinfo" undefined
  Solution: Wrap the <ssinfo> tag with a CDATA tag:

<script id=”ssinfo” type=”text/xml”>
 <![CDATA[
  <ssinfo> ……… </ssinfo>
 ]]>
</script> 

Dynamic Conversion of Documents

It is typically recommended to use the Contributor application where contributors can edit Elements that make up regions of the page.  While it is possible to instead setup a dynamic conversion to HTML of a document (such as a Microsoft Word doc) for part of a page via the Dynamic Converter feature of WCC, I have generally avoided it.

Dynamic Conversions of documents can be cumbersome, and the creators of the documents have to adhere to a specific document template so that the mapping over to HTML can occur successfully.  Whereas the Contributor application allows for a quick preview of your changes before you save them, you would instead have to check in a document and then visit the webpage to see if the document was converted properly to HTML for the page.

However, if your contributors are more comfortable using current applications such as Word to author their content, then Dynamic Converter may be preferred.

Element Actions for Contributors

Depending on the group of contributors that will be using the Contributor application, you may wish to either open up as much control over the Elements as possible, or restrict as many actions as possible.

The less technically advanced the contributor or the stricter the styling guidelines of the site, the more you may wish to restrict as many Element actions as possible so that more of the styling and code can be controlled in the background (for example, disabling the use of Tables in a WYSIWYG Element if you do not want contributors to use HTML tables for layout purposes).

 

Figure A-41 of Oracle's User's Guide for Site Studio Designer

 

On the other hand, the more technically advanced the user or the less strict the styling guidelines of the site, the more you may wish to open up many of the Element actions that the contributor will have control over.

Element to Region Definition Associations

It is possible to directly embed an Element Definition within a Region Definition via the “Embed the element definition inside the region definition” check box when adding an Element to a Region Definition.  However, it is generally recommended to not do so.  Instead, create all Element Definitions as separately managed pieces of content.

While an Element may seem to only apply to one particular Region Definition at the moment, it is possible that in the future the Element could be reused.  Also, it can get quite cumbersome from Site Studio Designer to get to the Element, since it will take multiple mouse clicks to get to it, especially if it is part of a Static List Element.

 

 

Caching

The out-of-the-box "Max Age" and "Max Age Secondary" site section properties can be used to set a max amount of time a primary or secondary page can be cached, which comes in handy when using a reverse proxy to cache your site.

Also, a more granular and programmatic approach to caching can be leveraged by using the Idoc Script function called cacheInclude().

For example, assume you have a Dynamic List element on a page whose query takes a long time to complete.  Instead of writing out the code in a template or fragment that executes that element and then writes out the display code, you could instead place that code in a resource include within a custom component.  Your template or fragment would then call that resource include via the cacheInclude() function.  The system will first check to see if the output display code from that resource include can be grabbed from the cache before it attempts to re-execute that logic (thereby saving the system from always having to execute the Dynamic List element on every request).

It is a good idea to create global Configuration variables to control the length of time you wish the cache to stay active before expiring.  You can reference those Configuration variables from the logic in your resource include when passing arguments to the cacheInclude() function.

For more info, refer to section A (Idoc Script Functions and Variables) and part V (Customizing Content Server with Components) of Oracle's Developing with Oracle WebCenter Content guide.

 

Related posts:

• Oracle WCC - What Is It and Why Would I Want to Use It?
• Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Managing Metadata
• Oracle WCC - Content Profile Best Practices for Developers

Oracle WCC - Site Studio Naming Conventions for Developers

This post focuses on naming conventions that developers can leverage in their Site Studio environments.  This post is part of a blog series exploring best practices to consider when planning for and building a Site Studio website.  Unlike my Getting Started with Site Studio post, for this series, I’m assuming you’re already working and fairly familiar with Site Studio - which is part of the Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC) offering.

Content Server Instance Naming

With a standard document management implementation, it is typical for Content Server instances to having naming conventions similar to UCMDEV, UCMQA, and UCMPROD.  However, for a WCM (Web Content Management) implementation it is recommended to instead use a different naming convention, such as a numbering scheme.  For example, WCM1 (for a DEV instance), WCM2 (for a QA instance), etc.  This is done so as to avoid confusion when migrating content between environments.  Otherwise, users have a tendency to get confused or apprehensive when they see production-ready content with “DEV” or “QA” in the Content ID name.  With the naming scheme, they will instead see references to WCM1, WCM2, etc.

Site ID Naming

When creating a new site, you must specify a Site ID.  Use only alpha characters.  Do not use any special characters such as an underscore ( _ ), since that may cause an issue in Site Studio Designer where your assets will not be listed from the Site Assets pane.

Site Asset Content ID Naming

Content ID (dDocName) naming conventions for site assets are important since Site Studio Designer uses the asset’s Content ID as the display name in the IDE (Integrated Development Environment).

Figure 5-17 from Oracle's User's Guide for Site Studio Designer

The Content ID prefixes referenced below are examples of the standards that could be put into place.  You may want to reference a website name in the prefixes below, but you may not wish to do so if you plan on reusing any of the site assets across multiple websites.  Note that Content ID’s are limited to 30 characters.

• Page Templates:
  • For Home Page: TPLT_HOME_
  • For Primary Pages: TPLT_PPAGE_
  • For Secondary Pages: TPLT_SPAGE_
• Subtemplates: STPLT_
• Region Templates: TPLT_REG_
• Region Definitions: DEF_REG_
• Placeholder Definitions: DEF_PH_
• Element Definitions:
  • For Plain Text elements: ELMT_TXT_
  • For WYSIWYG elements: ELMT_WYSIWYG_
  • For Image elements: ELMT_IMG_
  • For Static List elements: ELMT_SLIST_
  • For Dynamic List elements: ELMT_DLIST_
  • For Custom elements: ELMT_
• Custom Element Forms: CUST_FORM_
• Scripts: JS_
• CSS: CSS_
• Images: IMG_
• Fragment Libraries: LIB_FRAG_
• Contributor Data Files: <system generated Content ID>

Placeholder Definition Mapping Naming

When you associate a mapping name for your Placeholder Definitions (Tools -> Define Placeholder Definition Mappings in Site Studio Designer), it is recommended to specify user-friendly mapping names since they are displayed to an end user contributor while in Contribution Mode.  For example, if the Content ID for a Placeholder Definition is DEF_PH_ALL_ARTICLES, then you could use a more friendly mapping name of ALL_ARTICLES.  (Note that spaces are not allowed in mapping names.)

Fragment Naming

While it is possible from Site Studio Designer to filter out and display only the Fragments that are associated with the currently connected site, it is still recommended to specify a prefix for the Name of the Fragment of either the project name, website name, or company name.  This will make it easier to visually tell from the Toolbox window of Designer which Fragments are custom.  Also, since Fragments are sorted alphabetically and listed by their user-friendly Name, a common Name prefix will group the Fragments next to each other.

 

Related posts:

• Oracle WCC - What Is It and Why Would I Want to Use It?
• Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Managing Metadata
• Oracle WCC - Content Profile Best Practices for Developers

Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Building Websites in Site Studio

This blog series will explore best practices to consider when planning for and building an Oracle Site Studio website.  Unlike my Getting Started with Site Studio post, for this series, I’m assuming you’re already working and fairly familiar with Site Studio - which is part of the Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC) offering.

Over the course of this series, the following topics will be covered:

 

• Oracle WCC - Site Studio Naming Conventions for Developers

 

• Oracle WCC - Site Studio Page Development Best Practices

 

• Oracle WCC - Site Studio Fragment Best Practices for Developers

 

• Oracle WCC - Site Studio Migration Best Practices for Developers

 

• Oracle WCC - Helpful Site Studio Configuration Settings for Developers

 

Oracle also provides helpful notes you should reference when planning to build a Site Studio website.  Refer to section 4 (Efficient Web Site Planning) of the Oracle User’s Guide for Site Studio Designer.

 

Related posts:

• Oracle WCC - What Is It and Why Would I Want to Use It?
• Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Managing Metadata
• Oracle WCC - Content Profile Best Practices for Developers

Parallel Data Warehouse Version 2 and Polybase; Seamless querying of structured and unstructured data

Last November (2012) Microsoft introduced the second version of its massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture called Parallel Data Warehouse. There are some distinct differences between version 1 and version 2. Two of the biggest differences are:

1) PDW ships installed on a Dell appliance.

2) The inclusion of Polybase.

 PDW V2 is built using Dell’s Power Edge 12^th generation servers. Some of the advantages that are included in this construction are:

• Lower price point (backup and landing zone servers not longer required)
• Increased CPU power (16 vs V1′s 12 cores per compute node)
• Increased Memory (256 gb vs V1′s 96 gb per server)
• Increased storage/scalability (support for up to 5 Petabytes of disk space vs V1′s 610Tb)
• Infiniband Data Movement Speeds: FDR (14x bandwidth) vs V1′s QDR (4x bandwidth)
• Microsoft V2 enhancements include “direct attached” SAS JBOD storage, Hyper V, Mirroring, and Server 2012 Storage Spaces

Putting aside the advantages related to the hardware, this article aims to focus on Polybase which has quickly become a big part of Microsoft’s Big Data strategy.

Polybase is Microsoft’s entry to the cross platform query tool which enables users to write T-SQL code to simultaneously query relational and unstructured data. By allowing users to query in the familiar T-SQL code, Polybase eliminates the need to learn a new query language (MapReduce) and allows for the combination of the different data stores at the query level. The cross platform querying allows you to leave Hadoop data in its unstructured state and thus eliminates the need to populate a Data Warehouse with Hadoop data.

All Hadoop data has some inherent structure and Polybase analyzes this structure and brings the schema of the HDFS cluster into the metadata of the relational database which allows the Hadoop/unstructured data to be treated as a local table. There are a few preliminary steps that need to be performed, such as registering the Hadoop cluster (you can register many clusters as this is not a one-to-one relationship) and setting the file format for the cluster, however these are one time workloads that when completed enable you to create what is essentially a view over the HDFS data which is accessible to the relational query engine.

Polybase introduces the CTAS functionality, ‘Create Table as Select’, and when used in conjunction with the EXTERNAL keyword when querying unstructured data, allows the relational engine to retrieve the data from the nodes in the Hadoop cluster and store it as a temp and/or permanent table in the relational database. Not only can you do simple selects, you will be able to perform JOIN’s and Group By’s on the Hadoop data.

Pulling the data from the HDFS to a table in the relational database isn’t always the optimal plan but all this is done in parallel which allows for better performance and gains in processing. Also, as I’ll explain shortly, Phase 2 of Polybase will eliminate the need to store unstructured data in the relational db.

The result of the combining of traditional and non-traditional data sources, as seen in the below illustration, allows unified access with Microsoft’s BI tools such as Power Pivot and Power View with Excel. This simplifies the access to unstructured data and helps remove the complexity associated with ‘Big Data’.

  All of the above functionality will be present in the initial version of Polybase that ships with PDW v2.

As many might be aware, Polybase isn’t the first tool to allow querying of structured and unstructured data and what will truly distinguish Polybase from other tools such as Sqoop is the functionality that will be available in Phase 2.

When Phase 2 ships the query optimizer will be able make a cost-based decision, when referencing data in an HDFS, to determine whether it should transform the query into a MapReduce job to be performed on the Hadoop cluster or if it should just process using the SQL server instances on the PDW. Also, the optimizer will have the ability to move the workload of a query involving only PDW data to the Hadoop cluster. This intelligence within the optimizer will allow it to split the workload between the 2 platforms and thus leverage the true capabilities of the Hadoop cluster. All these decisions are of course “behind the scenes” and are totally transparent to the end user.

Ideally, getting the data into the hands (and on the screens) of the folks that know what to do with it is where the power of Business Intelligence truly lies and this is a big step in bringing that closer to reality. The next step in this march: shipping Polybase with other SQL Server versions as opposed to solely PDW. We’ll just have to wait and see what Polybase Phase 3 brings.

Oracle WCC - Getting Started with Site Studio

This post is a technical primer for Oracle Site Studio, including a quick overview of the technology and important concepts for anyone building websites using Site Studio.

Overview

Site Studio is part of Oracle’s Web Content Management (WCM) solution (not to be confused with Oracle WebCenter Sites, which is geared more towards marketing and branding websites).  Site Studio websites are built on a content management platform and allow for site designers to create the site structure, underlying page layout, and look and feel, whereby non-technical business end users can be given the ability to update web pages in-context (directly from their web browser while in Contribution Mode) without a need to involve someone from IT to make the change for them.

Site Studio is built on top of Oracle Content Server (a Java web application), which is the core of Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC).  Site Studio is a component that you can optionally enable on Content Server, and there is also a Site Studio for External Applications component which allows for the application server or website to be decoupled from Content Server.

Site Assets

The underlying site assets (i.e., content items) that are used to create and display a Site Studio website are stored in Content Server and are conceptually grouped as follows:

• Presentation Files – Style sheets and templates (page templates, region templates, and subtemplates).  When using the Site Studio for External Applications component, these files can either be stored in Content Server or with the web application.


• Content Files – Contributor data files, native documents, images, and other media files.


• Control and Configuration Files – Placeholder definitions, element definitions, region definitions, fragment libraries, and so on.

The following diagram depicts the relationship between site assets:

 

Figure 3-4 from Oracle's User's Guide for Site Studio Designer

 

When the Site Studio component is enabled, the site assets leverage the following custom metadata fields:

1. Web Site Object Type (xWebsiteObjectType)
2. Web Sites (xWebsites)
3. Exclude From Lists (xDontShowInListsForWebsites)
4. Web Site Section (xWebsiteSection)
5. Region Definition (xRegionDefinition)

Contribution Model

The Site Studio architecture allows for a separation of the presentation layer from the content.  The following diagram depicts the website contribution model:

 

Figure 3-3 from Oracle's User's Guide for Site Studio Designer

 

 The following is an example of steps taken by a Contributor to edit a webpage:

1. Contributor views a web page in their browser they wish to edit


2. Contributor enters Contribution Mode
    
   • NOTE: Default key combination is CTRL+SHIFT+F5


3. Contributor clicks the Edit action from the Contribution Region on the page they wish to update
    
   • NOTE: They are only allowed to edit a Contribution Region if they have the appropriate security permissions


4. A new browser window pops up displaying the Contributor application, which displays the editable Elements for that Contribution Region
    
   • NOTE: The Contributor application knows which editable Elements to display because it knows which Contributor Data File is being edited for that Contribution Region.  That data file has an xRegionDefinition metadata value which references the Content ID (unique identifier) of a Region Definition in the Content Server repository.  It is that Region Definition which defines the Element Definitions


5. Contributor edits one or more Elements from the Contributor application, then clicks the Save action


6. The Contributor application updates the Contributor Data File by checking in a new revision of that file into the Content Server repository


7. The Contributor application window closes and the webpage refreshes so that you can view the updated Contribution Region in-context with the rest of the page
    
   • NOTE: Typically, that new revision of the Contributor Data File is routed to Workflow for approval before it is published for the public to see

Consumption Model

When a webpage is requested, Site Studio pieces together all of the underlying site assets to dynamically generate a webpage.  The following diagram depicts the website presentation model:

 

Figure 3-2 from Oracle's User's Guide for Site Studio Designer

 

The following is an example of steps taken by Site Studio to dynamically display a webpage, where a portion of the page consists of Contributor content:

1. End user requests a web page (e.g., via a path-based URL such as /mysite/index.htm)


2. Site Studio loads the appropriate Page Template associated with that site section (where the Page Template can use static code, Placeholder Definitions, and Fragments to make up the page)


3. Site Studio loads the Placeholder Definition for the Contribution Region (which was either defined via the wcmPlaceholder tag in the Page Template, or from a site section property), which includes available Subtemplates, Region Definitions, and Region Templates


4. Site Studio loads the Contributor Data File for the Contribution Region (which was either defined from a site section property, or from the wcmPlaceholder tag in the Page Template) and identifies the xRegionDefinition metadata value associated with it


5. Site Studio uses the xRegionDefintion metadata value to find that Region Definition in the Placeholder Definition, which in turn then maps to a Region Template


6. Site Studio uses that Region Template to write out the display code of the contributor input saved in the Contributor Data File (e.g., wrapping an <H1> HTML tag around a header text element)


7. Site Studio takes the output from that Region Template and includes it as a snippet of code to be plugged into the larger Page Template output

 

For More Information

• Oracle WCC 11g Release 1 - User’s Guide for Site Studio Contributor
• Oracle WCC 11g Release 1 - User’s Guide for Site Studio Designer
• Oracle WCC 11g Release 1 - User’s Guide for Site Studio Publisher
• Oracle WCC 11g Release 1 - Administrator and Manager’s Guide for Site Studio
• Oracle WCC 11g Release 1 - Technical Reference Guide for Site Studio
• Oracle WCC 11g Release 1 - Developer’s Guide for Site Studio for External Applications

 

Related posts:

• Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Building Websites in Site Studio
• Oracle WCC - What Is It and Why Would I Want to Use It?
• Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Managing Metadata
• Oracle WCC - Content Profile Best Practices for Developers

Oracle WCC - Content Profile Best Practices for Developers

Setting up content profiles makes working with content from an Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC) user interface much more manageable and convenient for the end user. Work with your company to establish content requirements for specific roles, then utilize these best practices to deliver a user experience that is free from unnecessary fields.

What Are Content Profiles?

Content profiles consist of rules that control the display of metadata for a content item.  You can choose which metadata fields you wish to display, hide, make required, provide default values for, and group together based on whether you’re viewing a Check In, Update, Content Information, or Search page.

For example, if there are 50 metadata fields globally defined in the WCC repository, you could have an HR content profile that controls just 10 of those fields that are relevant only to an HR employee.  Out of those 10 fields, you could make 3 of them hidden with default values, 1 of them read-only with a default value, 2 of them required to ensure a value is always assigned, and the rest could be editable fields.  The remaining 40 fields in the system could then be completely left off of the display.

WCC knows which content profile to use per content item by inspecting a metadata field and associating its value to a corresponding content profile which is triggered off of that metadata value.  For example, if a content item is tagged with an xIdcProfile metadata value of “HR”, and there’s a content profile that triggers off of that metadata value, then that profile will be used to control the display.

The following high-level steps are taken to set up a content profile from the Configuration Manager admin applet:

1. From the “Information Fields” tab, edit the pre-existing “Profile” (xIdcProfile) metadata field – this is the default out-of-the-box field as of version 11g – to have a dropdown value that matches the trigger value of a content profile.  In this example, we’ll use a value of “HR”.


2. From the “Rules” tab, create rules and assign the appropriate metadata fields to them.


3. From the “Profiles” tab:
   • Ensure that the “Profile” (xIdcProfile) metadata field is used as the profile trigger.
   • Then create a new content profile and have it trigger off of the “HR” value of the xIdcProfile field, and then assign the rules you created earlier.

Best Practices

1. Use a metadata field that is dedicated to serving as the profile trigger field.  Prior to version 11g, there was not an out-of-the-box dedicated metadata field to use as the profile trigger field.  Therefore, in pre-11g versions it was common to create a new custom metadata field such as xProfileTrigger.  As of version 11g, there is now an out-of-the-box xIdcProfile metadata field that is automatically configured to act as the profile trigger field.


2. Specify a user-friendly display label.  The “Display Label” is viewable from the user interface, and should therefore be relatively short and descriptive.


3. Use the “Exclude non-rule fields” option.  If this option is not selected and a new metadata field is added to the system, then that field will be displayed from all other content profiles even though you did not explicitly add it to each of those profiles.  Therefore, enabling this option allows pre-existing content profiles to remain unaltered when new metadata fields are added to the system.


4. Create a “Check In” rule and a “Search” rule for a profile.  It is common to have different display needs based on whether the user is checking in or searching for a content item.  Therefore, having two separate rules that fire on these different actions provide you more control.  For example, if you have an “HR” content profile, it could consist of two rules titled “HRCheckInFields” and “HRSearchFields”.  The “HRCheckInFields” rule would fire off of the following actions: “Check in new”, “Check in selected”, and “Content update”.  Then the “HRSearchFields” rule would fire off of the following actions: “Content information” and “Search”.

 

Related posts:

• Oracle WCC - What Is It and Why Would I Want to Use It?
• Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Managing Metadata
• Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Building Websites in Site Studio

Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Managing Metadata

Logic and functionality are driven off of metadata, so it’s important to understand what it is and how it functions in an Oracle WebCenter Content (WCC) environment. This post covers the basics and provides best practices when working with metadata.

Let’s start with the basics:

Metadata is one of the most important aspects of a content management solution.  Every WCC customer I’ve worked with has asked the following age-old question:

What is metadata?

The definition I give usually depends on the audience I’m talking to.  For example, here are some common responses I provide:

• Metadata is data about data.
• Metadata is the structured information associated with an unstructured content item.
• Metadata is the who / what / when / where / how of a content item.
• Metadata provides business context to a content item.

I then usually provide an example such as an HR document which is stored as a content item in the WCC repository, where “Title”, “Type”, and “Author” are metadata fields associated with that HR document.  So in that example, the HR document is the unstructured file, and the “Title”, “Type”, and “Author” values are the structured information associated with that unstructured file.

Another common point of confusion or discussion is distinguishing between a metadata field and the value itself.  For example, common terms that get discussed are “fields”, “attributes”, “tags”, and “values”.  In the Oracle WCC space, it is common to use verbiage of “metadata fields” and then “metadata values”.  For example, a “metadata field” would be “Title”, and a corresponding “metadata value” stored in that field would be “HR Time and Expense Policy”.

Metadata Types

There are two types of metadata in WCC:

• Standard Metadata - These fields are a core part of the system and many are automatically tracked in the back-end.  Some of them are required to have a value before a content item can be checked in.  You cannot edit or delete these fields.  They have an internal field name prefix of “d”.  For example: Title (dDocTitle), Type (dDocType), Content ID (dDocName), Author (dDocAuthor).


• Custom Metadata - User-defined metadata fields.  These fields have an internal field name prefix of “x”.  Note that some custom metadata fields are provided by Oracle.  For example, the “Profile” (xIdcProfile) and “Comments” (xComments) fields are added out-of-the-box from Oracle, and the “Storage Rule” (xStorageRule), “Partition ID” (xPartitionId), and “Web Flag” (xWebFlag) fields are added via the FileStoreProvider component from Oracle.

How Is Metadata Leveraged in an Oracle WCC Environment?

The following examples are only a sample of what metadata is used for in WCC:

• Security - There are two metadata fields that are used to control a user’s read/write/delete/admin access to a content item: “Security Group” (dSecurityGroup) and “Account” (dDocAccount).


• Storage - There are three metadata fields that can be used to control where files are stored: “Partition ID” (xPartitionId), “Web Flag” (xWebFlag), and “Storage Rule” (xStorageRule).


• Conversions - The “File Extension” (dExtension) of the file checked into the repository maps to a “File Format” (dFormat), which then maps to a corresponding conversion to perform on the file that is checked in.


• Profiles - A metadata field is used to trigger which content profile is used to control the display of a content item from a user interface.  The common field used is “Profile” (xIdcProfile).


• Workflow - The “Security Group” (dSecurityGroup) metadata field, and optionally one admin-defined additional metadata field, control which content items should be routed into a review/approval workflow before the content is indexed and released for consumption.


• Search - You can search for content based on their metadata field values.

Metadata fields are created from the “Information Fields” tab of the Configuration Manager admin applet.  The “Tables”, “Views”, and “Relations” tabs of that same admin applet can also be used to specify dropdown values, dependent choice lists, and hierarchical tree values for metadata fields.

All metadata values are stored in the database that was used to install and configure WCC.  For example:

• DocMeta – This database table stores all the custom metadata values associated with a document revision.  Each time a new custom metadata field is added to the system by an admin, this table is altered in the back-end by adding a new column to the table for that new field.


• Documents – This database table stores some of the standard metadata values associated with a document revision, such as the file name (dOriginalName), file extension (dExtension), file size (dFileSize), and file format (dFormat).


• Revisions – This database table stores additional standard metadata values associated with a document revision, such as the Content ID (dDocName), Type (dDocType), Title (dDocTitle), Author (dDocAuthor), and Security Group (dSecurityGroup).

Best Practices

1. Identify metadata field labels that are descriptive and consistent with naming standards across enterprise applications.  This will make content easier to find, and users navigating between different applications will benefit from consistent naming.  For example, instead of a field label of “Name”, a more descriptive label would be “First Name”.  Or if other applications in your enterprise get more descriptive than that and have defined field labels such as “Bill To First Name”, “Ship To First Name”, and so on, then it would be beneficial to match their naming standards for consistency across the enterprise.


2. Specify predefined dropdown and tree values that are descriptive and organized.  For example, if a field has a predefined list of dropdown values to choose from, identify the labels for each of those dropdown values.  And if there is a hierarchical tree relationship between the values, or if there are multiple metadata fields that use a dependent choice list, then define the parent-child relationships between each of the values.


3. If you have an enterprise taxonomy or an enterprise taxonomist, work collaboratively with them when defining metadata field names and values to ensure appropriate controlled vocabularies and naming standards.  Note that not all metadata fields will show up in an enterprise taxonomy (e.g., an application-specific “Release Date” field that is used more for back-end application logic may not warrant tracking at an enterprise taxonomy level).


4. Control the number of metadata fields and reuse fields when possible.  This will help limit maintenance efforts.  For example, if you have an “HR Department Next Review Date” field and a “Legal Department Next Review Date” field, it would be feasible to consider whether a single “Next Review Date” field would suffice.


5. Typically do not configure a metadata field to have a Default value or to be Required from the “Information Fields” tab of the Configuration Manager admin applet, since doing so sets a default or required setting for that field for every single content item in the repository.  Instead, content profiles are typically used to control default and required settings.


6. Limit the number of fields displayed to a user and default as many values as possible by using content profiles.  The more and more fields displayed to a user, the more and more likely they are to grow impatient setting all those values.  For example, if 50 metadata fields are globally defined in the system, you could create an “HR” content profile that HR contributors could use which displays only the limited set of fields that HR employees care about.


7. Establish and adhere to metadata standards and governance for your enterprise.  For example, if someone comes along and wants to add 5 new fields, then those fields should be vetted to determine whether they’re truly needed and to agree on their naming.  Also, are there a set of metadata values that every piece of content in your enterprise should be tagged with (such as ones from the Dublin Core set of standard metadata fields like “Title”, “Date”, and “Type”)?


8. Keep a central list of metadata fields being used so that all WCC implementations at your organization are aware of the field names and values already in use.

Related posts:

• Oracle WCC - What Is It and Why Would I Want to Use It?
• Oracle WCC - Content Profile Best Practices for Developers
• Oracle WCC - Best Practices for Building Websites in Site Studio