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Overview of WCM Product architecture and Key Components of WCM
6.1
The Lotus Web Content Management 6.1 application
is fully integrated with WebSphere Portal 6.1. As such, all required components
of the Lotus Web Content Management application are installed with WebSphere
Portal 6.1. The following figure provides a high level overview of
where Lotus Web Content Management fits into the WebSphere Portal infrastructure.
Web Content Management architectural overview
Note the following differences between Lotus
Web Content Manager and Portal Document Manager:
- Portal Document Manager has been removed
from Portal 6.1, and therefore, such documents can no longer be rendered
within Lotus Web Content Manager. Customers that have Portal Document Manager
documents must provide an alternative method such as to use Lotus Quickr.
Lotus Web Content Manager provides a tool to find all Portal Document Manager
references for the customer to fix those references.
- Lotus Web Content Manager used to query for
users by using WebSphere Member Manager in previous releases. In
6.1, WebSphere Member Manager has been replaced with Virtual Member Manager.
Lotus Web Content Manager uses PUMA everywhere, which in turn uses Virtual
Member Manager.
2.0.1 Key components of WCM
This section defines the key components of IBM Lotus Web Content Management™
IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ Server
The IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ Content Server is the
core
of the IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ application. All requests
for content are ultimately processed by the Content Server.
The IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ Content Server leverages Virtual
Member Manager as its user repository. This repository is used for both
authentication as well as determining group membership for authenticated
users.
IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ Content Repository
When you first enable IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ , it uses WebSphere
Portal’s embedded Apache
® Derby database as its content repository.
If desired, you can switch your IBM Lotus Web Content Management™
repository
to any of the supported databases listed at
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wssrs=688&uid=swg27007791
| Note: if
you choose to store your content in IBM Content Manager you can still reference
items stored in IBM Content Manager from within IBM Lotus Web Content Management™
using the Federated Components. |
As this list of supported databases is subject to change, refer to the
WebSphere Portal 6.1 Information Center for details on the latest supported
versions and platforms, which is available at:
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=688&uid=swg27007791
In addition, refer to each product's documentation for details on the specific
hardware and software requirements for these databases.
IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ Authoring Portlet
The user interface for working with IBM Lotus Web Content Management™
is provided via a Portlet running within WebSphere Portal.
The Authoring Portlet is (more accurately) your sole graphical user interface
for interacting with IBM Lotus Web Content Management™. Content creators
use the portlet to author content. Content approvers use this same portlet
for managing content. Developers use this portlet to create technical assets
(for example, Presentation Templates, Workflows, Syndication components,
and so forth). The Authoring Portlet allows for very granular user interface
security controls.
| Restriction:
The Authoring Portlet must be running on the IBM Lotus Web Content
Management™ server itself. Unlike the Remote Rendering Portlet, there
is no version of the Authoring Portlet that supports accessing IBM Lotus
Web Content Management™ on a remote WebSphere Portal server. |
IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ Connect Servlet
The Connect Servlet is used to deliver Web content outside of a WebSphere
Portal environment. You would use this servlet when you need to deliver
a traditional stand-alone Web site. Site visitors can access content by
requesting the HTML directly from the Connect Servlet.
It is important to note that even if you only use Connect Servlet to deliver
stand-alone (non-portal) Web sites, the core IBM Lotus Web Content Management™
application always runs on WebSphere Portal.
IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ Rendering Portlets
IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ provides two Portlets that can display
your content in WebSphere Portal. These portlets require no Java coding
- only simple configuration by the portal administrator.
IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ Local Rendering Portlet
A local rendering portlet displays Web content on the same portal server
as the instance where IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ is installed.
This portlet can only be used when deployed to a WebSphere Portal
Server that also has a live instance of IBM Lotus Web Content Management™.
The Local Rendering Portlet relies on the IBM Lotus Web Content Management™
API to interact with the IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ Content Server.
IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ Remote Rendering Portlet
A remote rendering portlet displays Web content on a different portal server
than the instance where IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ is installed.
Unlike the Local Rendering Portlet, the Remote Rendering Portlet uses an
HTTP connection to interact with a remote IBM Lotus Web Content Management™
Content Server at runtime. The configuration of this portlet contains some
additional fields to facilitate this type of connection.
| Tip: It
is important to be aware of your infrastructure when using the Remote Rendering
Portlet. firewalls, Proxies, and other network issues can have a dramatic
effect on the performance of the Remote Rendering Portlet. |
IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ Public API
While IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ provides a solid set of
Web content management capabilities
out-of-the-box, there are times
when the standard capabilities of IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ do
not meet your exact needs. For situations such as this IBM Workplace Web
Content Management provides a Java API.
It is important to note that the IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ API
does not expose all the capabilities of the IBM Lotus Web Content Management™
application. The JavaDocs should be reviewed for a complete set of
the features available using the API. The Javadoc HTML files are located
under the was_profile_root folder.
In this path name, was_profile_root
is the profile root for WebSphere
Portal Server.
For example, these files were found on our wcm01.cam.itso.ibm.com server
at:
C:\IBM\WebSphere\wp_profile\installedApps\wc01\wcm.ear\ilwwcm.war\webinterface\api-javadoc
| Restriction:
The Web Content Management API only supports Java code running in the
same Java Virtual Machine as Web Content Management itself. If you wish
to access the IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ API remotely you will
need to build some type of service layer on the Web Content Management
server to broker your requests. The most common solution to this issue
is to develop a Web Service to perform this function. |
IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ JavaServer Pages Tags
In addition to the Java API, IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ provides
a JavaServer Pages Tag Library that you can use when developing Portlets
and other J2EE applications. The tags in this library make it very easy
to access your IBM Lotus Web Content Management™ content from a JSP page.
These
tags rely on the API for their functionality so they do not provide any
capabilities beyond those of the API.
| Restriction:
Because the JSP Tags rely on the Web Content Management API for functionality
they must run in the same Java Virtual Machine as the IBM Lotus Web Content
Management™ server. |
For more details on the API and JSP Tags, see the IBM Lotus Web Content
Management™ Information Center.