Re: Forms Based sre, but could that mean to a custom DB table?

Paul,

OpenCMS is one of the more robust CMS engines for doing pure CM work, but
lacks some of the goodies that the blogger type open source CMSes (*Nuke
types) have.  If you're looking to do straight web content or document
management though, I think it's solid, especially if you have a preference
for running/maintaining/extending Java apps over others.

You pose a pretty specific OpenCMS question and will likely want to join the
opencms mail-list (go to http://opencms.org and check the 'Development' menu
at the top for the link.)

There is some documentation in PDF format for opencms, but most of the
helpful docs are going to be interactive modules.  These docs have
advantages, but the downside is you'll need to spend an hour to install the
vanilla environment to run OpenCMs (Tomcat and MySQL), which a non-techie
can handle usually.  (Download, click the .exe installer, etc.)

Specifically, you'll want to download the NewsModule tutorial which shows
how to create custom types by creating the support Java classes and database
tables to accomplish this.  This process will take Java development
knowledge (which it seems you have), and while it isn't a built-in user
feature that can be accomplished from the web interface as with some
commercial tools (Fatwire Content Server and BroadVision One-to-One Content
(used to be BladeRunnner) come to mind), there is added flexibility in being
able to define what pre/post actions should happen when one of your content
items is created/destroyed.

There are links to the 'modules sandbox'  and documents which you'll find on
the opencms.org Download menu, and here is another link to OpenCMS modules
and docs (including the News Module mentioned above) to get you started.  :
http://opencms.al-arenal.de/

There are also opencms forum topics which you'll find helpful  -
http://synyx.de/board/viewforum.php?f=29&sid=3bdb127957a397ee10a7197dacc72ced

Here is a posting on the forum specific to your topic that gives a nice
overview of the tasks involved in creating custom types (without you having
to install opencms and the newsmodule.)
http://synyx.de/board/viewtopic.php?t=159&sid=3bdb127957a397ee10a7197dacc72ced

There are a number of (large) clients who either moved away from Vignette
and other expensive commercial CMSes to OpenCMs, because it was also
Java-based, scalable, and provided the core CMS functionality they needed.

And in regard to the recent 'High Volume Sites' topic on this list, I should
point out that one of my favorite features of OpenCMS is the option to
implement a 'push' rather than 'pull' strategy for publishing dynamic pages.
This option in OpenCMS aggregates the multiple dynamic content items for a
given web page template on the OpenCMS staging server and 'pushes' (exports)
that content as static HTML and binary (images, docs, etc.) files to your
web server, thus removing the CMS and Java application server from the
rendering of these pages on your live site.

Most sites using a CMS in the rendering of dynamic content must use an XML
tag library specific to that CMS to pull all pieces of a template together
at the time of a page request which is much slower.  The more advances
'pull' strategy CMSes (such as Zope/Plone) have a reliance on sophisticated
cacheing strategies (some that are built-in, and some that are part of the
web or proxy servers sitting in front of Zope/Plone.)  OpenCMS does have a
built-in cacheing mechanism, but if you employ the 'static export' option,
there is no need.

In my opinion, you simply can't get a faster, more scalable site than with
static content, so unless you have personalized portal type functionalitly
as a requirement (think Amazon.com that advertises items related to other
items you've already purchased), you can likely take advantage of such a
publishing scheme and save a lot of $ on hardware (you won't have to deploy
a clustered app server and database for your live site; just for your
staging server which only internal employees can access - this doesn't apply
if you have tons of editors, though - you'd need to scale staging in that
case.)

Btw, on the Java-based CMS front, most of the clients we've worked with have
gone with OpenCMS or RedHat CMS (which was the Java version of the ArsDigita
product, which in turn was derived from the Tcl-based OpenACS you may have
seen posts on.)  Another leading Java-based oscms is Cofax.

Good luck with OpenCMS.  I hope some of this info helps,


Ken Wasetis
Director of Technology, SPR Inc.
[email protected]
224.628.1664



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "P.Hill & E.Goodall" <goodhill-aS9lmoZGLiVWk0Htik3J/[email protected]>
To: "Content Management List" <cms-list-/[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2004 11:10 PM
Subject: [cms-list] Forms Based sre, but could that mean to a custom DB
table?


> Hi,
>
> I have been reading all I can about CMSes, including the 100s of messages
> that arrived over the holidays, and I'm still wondering if I even want to
deal
> with such beasts, but I think I do, really I think I do!
>
> Can someone explain to me how a product like OpenCMS or any other CMS
> deals with 'Form based editing of content items'.  I know an HTML form
> when I see it that is not the question.
>
> Does this data go to XML?  I assume the answer is yes.
> But does it have to stay that way?
> I have a database full of interesting multi-column entries (not
> document blobs managed in a database).  If I were to use
> such a system would I have to
> (a) change my storage paradigm and put everything in XML then into
> a text field in a database.
> or
> is there the possibility with
> (b) a 'simple matter of a litte bit of softare' I can store things into my
> custom database, but still have the CMS manage publising and accessability
of
> the asset?
>
> TIA,
> -Paul
>
> (*) I happen to be a Java developer, so I'm interested in Java solutions.
>
>
> --
> http://cms-list.org/
> please trim your posts.

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