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This section provides an overview of the IBM Web Content Manager (WCM) product architecture and introduces its key components including the WCM Server, content repository, authoring portlet, connect portlet, rendering portlet, and public API.
Product architecture overview
The IBM Web Content Manager 7.0 application is fully integrated with WebSphere Portal 7.0. As such, all required components of the IBM Web Content Manager application are installed with WebSphere Portal 7.0.
The following figure shows the high level overview of where IBM Web Content Manager fits into the WebSphere Portal infrastructure.
The key components in the architecture figure above are explained as follows.
Key components of WCM
WCM consists of the following key components:
- WCM content server
- WCM content repository
- WCM authoring portlet
- WCM connect servlet
- WCM rendering portlet
- WCM public API
WCM Content Server
The IBM Web Content Manager Server is the
core of the IBM Web Content Manager application. All requests for content are ultimately processed by the content server.
The WCM 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.
WCM content repository
When you first enable WCM, it uses WebSphere Portal’s embedded Apache
® Derby database as its content repository.
If necessary, you can switch your WCM content repository to any of the supported databases listed at
https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27007791
Note: If you choose to store your content in IBM Content Manager you can still reference items stored in IBM Content Manager within WCM using the Federated Components.
As the list of supported databases is subject to change, refer to the WebSphere Portal 7.0 product documentation for details on the latest supported versions and platforms, which is available at:
https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27007791
In addition, refer to each product's documentation for details on the specific hardware and software requirements for these databases.
WCM authoring portlet
The user interface for working with WCM
is provided via a portlet running within WebSphere Portal.
The WCM authoring portlet is the user interface for interacting with WCM. Content creators use the portlet to create (author) content. Content approvers use this same portlet for managing the content. The website developers use this portlet to create technical assets, for example, presentation templates, workflows, and syndication components.
The authoring portlet supports granular user interface security controls.
WCM connect servlet
The WCM connect servlet is used to deliver web content outside of a WebSphere Portal environment. Use this servlet when you need to deliver a traditional stand-alone website. Site visitors can access content by requesting the HTML directly from the connect servlet.
Important: Even if you only use the connect servlet to deliver stand-alone (non-portal) websites, the core WCM application always runs on WebSphere Portal.
WCM rendering portlet
WCM provides web content viewer portlet (JSR 286) that can display content in WebSphere Portal. This portlet requires no Java coding - only simple configuration by the portal administrator.
The web content viewer portlet (JSR 286) can be configured to display web content on the same portal server as the instance where WCM is installed or configured to display web content on a different portal server than the instance where WCM is installed.
The following link explains how web content viewer (JSR 286) portlet can be configured to render content residing on a remote WCM Server:
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/portalwiki.nsf/dx/Rendering_Web_Content_Viewer_portlet_consumed_from_Remote_IBM_Web_Content_Manager_V7_using_WSRP.__Setup_and_troubleshooting_guide.
Tip: Be aware of your infrastructure when using the web content viewer portlet (JSR 286) to render content residing on a remote WCM server.
WCM public API
While WCM provides a solid set of web content management capabilities out-of-the-box, there are times when the standard capabilities of WCM do not meet your exact needs. For situations such as this, WCM provides a Java API.
Note: WCM API does not expose all the capabilities of WCM. Review the JavaDocs for a complete set of the features available using the API. The Javadoc HTML files are located under the was_profile_root\installedApps\nodename\wcm.ear\ilwwcm.war\webinterface\ folder.
In this path name, was_profile_root is the profile root for WebSphere Portal Server.
For example, these files are found on our server at:
C:\IBM\WebSphere\wp_profile\installedApps\wc01\wcm.ear\ilwwcm.war\webinterface\api-javadoc
Restriction: WCM API only supports Java code running in the same Java Virtual Machine as WCM itself. If you wish to access the WCM API remotely, you will need to build some type of service layer on the WCM server to broker your requests. The most common solution to this issue is to develop a web service to perform this function.
IBM Web Content ManagerJavaServer Pages Tags
In addition to the Java API, IBM Web Content Manager 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 WCM 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 WCM API for functionality, they must run in the same Java Virtual Machine as the WCM server.
For more details on the API and JSP Tags, see the IBM Web Content Manager Product documentation.