Web Content Management (WCM)

Last modified on 24.03.98 13:26:42 by gst 
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This page contains information about Web Content Management and correspondig systems and tools.
It has been created and is maintained by Dr. Gernot Starke, one of the founding members of the
STARKE Team.
Trade marks and brand names are copyright of the holders.
 Contents:

WCM Intro & Architectures

WCM Architecture Overview
This diagram depicts the main core and interacting components of a web content management system (WCMS). Have a look how a (typical) WCMS works:
1.) The WCMS gets and puts all its documents and the corresponding meta data (attributes) into its document base.
2.) Users connect to the WCMS by standard browser clients.
3.) If  the access to the WCMS is protected, users have to log in (with userid & password). Access rights are usually kept on a "per-object" basis in the document base. The WCMS might interface to existing user directories via LDAP or similar protocols.
4.) Users often want to search the repository for documents containing certain keywords. A fulltext search engine therefore belongs to any WCMS. It should search not only HTML files, but also most existing office formats (doc, ppt, pdf, xls, ps etc.).
5.) The search engine has to keep track on users' access rights: It must only give results a user is allowed to see...
6.) The search engine usually keeps its own index. It is most convenient if the WCMS immediately updates this search index if a new or modified document is checked into its document base.
7.) To generate the index, the search engine scans the objects in the document base.
8.) & 9.)  A web spider supports indexing of remote websites. Users can therefore also retrieve documents stored in the vast universe of the internet.
10.) Other datasources like SQL-databases can be integrated via standard embedded SQL, JDBC or any proprietary DB interface.
11.) Last not least: Other applications, like legacy systems, have to communicate with the WCMS via the API, the application programming interface.
 

WCM Tool Evaluation Checklist

The following criteria can serve only as a coarse approximation to your real requirements, as those will vary from project to project. Experience from different WCM projects taught, that those requirements given below provide a good starting point.
 
Name Description
Information Structure Possibility to structure the information contained in the system in flexible formats, like trees, graphs. New structure elements should be create-able on-the-fly.  
All information structures should be browsable.
Meta Data It should be possible to define and manage meta data, information about the data beeing stored in the system. Meta data can be viewed as a number of attributes associated with a specific class of objects.
Link Management Hyperlinks maintained automatically, at least between objects in the repository.
Separation of Layout   
and Content		 Strict separation between the graphical appearance of objects and their content.
Browser Client On the client side only standard browser software
Version Management Ever heard of RCS and CVS? Never start a real project without a version management tool. Nobody should have to live without such versatile systems, something like that must  be part of any serious WCM. It should include not only the data objects, but also the meta data (attributes), so that complete versions can be retrieved later.
Dynamic assembly of pages Web pages should be generated "on the fly", on the basis of what is currently needed and what the user is allowed to see.
User and Permission Management It should be possible to assign access/modification permissions to specific users or groups. User authorisation should be integrateble with standard directory services like X500 or LDAP.
Search Engine A powerful, full-text search engine should be integral part of the product. It's good if users can find the required information regardless of document formats. The better search engines can search in over 100 different file formats (office formats, ps, pdf, ...)
Extensible The tool should support custom extensions to better suit specific needs.
Graphical Navigation Explorer or file-manager like navigation
Scaleability Tool can be scaled to fit increasing demand or changing client expectations. That's definitely easier with Unix-based systems (as NT has written children-play-stuff all over).
Activity logs All activites are logged, to be able to track customer downloads (and propably bill them for it!)
Integration of existing systems Integrate existing applications, websites, databases, workflow systems  and document management systems into the system. Therefore the WCM needs a high-level API to facilitate such integration efforts.
 
 

Tool Overview

Several tools exist to conquer the manyfold problems of web content management. In the following paragraphs I try to highlight the technical characteristics of some tools.
Please note: This list is by no means complete. Inclusion or exclusion of a particular tools does not imply a prejudice of any kind.
 

Hyperwave (Hyperwave GmbH, Munich, Germany)

Build from scratch to match web document management requirements, Hyperwave was formerly called Hyper-G and has been developed by a group of scientists from the University of Graz, Austria.

A demo version is available from the internet, Hyperwave provides interested parties with a 30--day evaluation key. Installation is
simple, accompanied by some fancy (Macromind?) animation. After I received my licence, everything worked pretty smooth. I even got some feedback from their support crew within 2-3 days.

Very strong in link management and information structuring via collections.  Excellent document versioning, including meta info.

Scalable, runs on a variety of platforms, from Unix to NT. Comes with  its own OO-database system, but can store data also in an Oracle database for improved performance.

Version 4.0 is expected to bring server-side JavaScript (see the Netscape library for details...) for more efficient server side programming.

Hyperwave bibliography:
As you can see below, the Hyperwave Information Server has received quite some attention in print media.

 

LiveLink (Opentext Inc., Canada & Switzerland)

With a long experience in document management and indexing, OpenText created a very powerful WCMS
called LiveLink. Very good programming interface, a purely object oriented architecture.

Highly scalable, flexible and powerful. Many excellent reference projects (Ford, HP, ISO etc).
 
 

Storyserver (Vignette Inc.)

Rightsite (Documentum Inc.)

Web Deputy (Hazelweb)

Aziza Web Manager

WCM Projects

The Web Content Management projects referenced here stem from a variety of sources. A few of them have been published in the Internet, usually by tool vendors. Some others have been made public by (german) magazines.

Due to reasons of privacy and competitive advantage, I cannot quote all customer names here.
 

WCM on the Internet

Some WCM systems are online on the Internet. Samples:
Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt Implements a blackboard with the Hyperwave WCMS. Simple and straightforward implementation. 
Kleine Zeitung An Austrian online newspaper. New layout. The server seems to be "mid-sized" (somewhat slow...)
Kinonews A German cinema newspaper.
European Space Agency
<more to come soon>
 

Related Articles & Links

Even in the vast information universe of the Internet, not much has been written on web content management. The tool vendors are not very active in writing acceptable white-papers and the technical authors are all busy writing about
Java.  

The author (aka: About myself)

After mastering in computer science at the technical university of Aachen, Germany in 1989 and several years of industrial experience I received my PhD from Professor Dr. Gerhard Chroust, with a thesis on „Software Development Processes" at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria.
Employed at the Schumann Unternehmensberatung AG in Cologne  since 1994, I  consult large and mid-size enterprises on software development and EDP strategy. In 1996 my boss named me technical manager of the „Object Reality Center", with a focus on projects around Java, CORBA and Intra-/Internet as integration platforms. More info can be found on our homepage.
Good luck: Apart from all that silicon & software mumbo-jumbo, I'm married, have a little daughter  and practise  tenor saxophone.