RealTime Publishing in Oracle WebCenter Sites / Fatwire

What is Dynamic Publishing?

Dynamic publishing is the process of copying assets and their underlying schema from one WebCenter Sites system to another. This Dynamic Publishing is of two types.

1. Mirror to Server : Mirror to Server is the method used to copy database rows to remote dynamic server

2. Real time Publishing : Real time Publishing is the method used to copy assets to remote dynamic server.

What is RealTimePublishing?

RealTime publishing is a dynamic publishing process. In RealTime publishing, this process is broken up into five stages. The System performs all the five steps in an order, to perform the RealTime publishing.

RealTime publishing is the preferred method for publishing. Using the RealTime user interface, an administrator can monitor the progress of a publishing session, bulk publish selected assets using the on demand queue, bulk un-approve the assets that are approved for publishing, cancel publishing process, and redo publishing sessions, etc.

Complete Publishing Mode:

When the destination is configured for complete publishing mode, the process proceeds without interruption.

Delayed Publishing Mode:

When configured for delayed publishing mode, the process pauses before the fourth step. User interaction is needed for the session to complete. It continues to stage 4 only after the administrator selects the Resume button on the “Publish Console” or “Publishing Status” screen.

As the publishing session proceeds, you can monitor the progress of each stage on the ‘Publishing Status’ screen.

Five Stages of Publishing:

1. Gathering data to publish:

a. The WebCenter Sites source system locks the assets that are approved for this publishing session.  This ensures the assets that need to be published from being edited during publishing.

b. The list of assets to be published from source to destination systems are created in a file called MANIFEST. The manifest identifies the assets that must exist together on the destination to prevent broken links and incomplete pages.

2. Serializing data:

a. The WebCenter Sites source system mirrors the following items:

– Asset types
– Tables
– Approved assets

b. The data that needs to be published to the target will be serialized at the source system (i.e, translation into binary format).

3. Sending data to the target:

a. The destination WebCenter Sites database locks assets that are approved for this publishing session. When assets on the target are locked, they cannot be edited.

b. The WebCenter Sites source system sends the serialized data and the manifest file to the destination.

4. Deserializing and saving data:

a. The WebCenter Sites destination system de-serializes (to WebCenterSites format) the mirrored asset types, tables, and approved assets.

b. The destination system’s database updates asset types and tables with the deserialized ones, or adds them as new data.

c. The destination system uses the manifest to determine when to commit assets to its database.

5. Updating page caches:

The destination system completes the publication process, and does the following tasks:

a. To remove the expired pages, the page cachce is flushed.

b. If any new pages are added, they are added to the cached.

In this way, the RealTime publishing works in Oracle WebCenter Sites.

Fatwire Interview Questions

“Fatwire Interview Questions” is one of the most frequently googled search term in Google. Hence, I’m coming today with a list of Fatwire Interview questions. The same will be applied for Oracle WebCenter Sites as-well.

Note: These are the questions which I’ve faced from most of the interviewers.

1. What are the different versions of Fatwire that you have worked on?
2. Explain difference between Basic Asset Model and Flex Asset Model?
3. Explain difference between CSElement and Template?
4. Explain about templates and its need in Fatwire CMS?
5. Explain how will you handle multi-level languages in Fatwire?
6. Explain about Asset and Asset Type?
7. Explain about the Basic Asset Model?
8. Explain about the Flex Asset Model?
9. Explain about Rendering?
10. Explain about different Publishing methodologies?
11. Explain about the types of publishing Fatwire supports?
12. Explain about Roles and ACLs?
13. Explain about Attribute Editors and how will you create Attribute Editors?
14. Explain about Workflow?
15. Explain about the default asset types of Fatwire?
16. Explain the use of Page Asset Type in Fatwire CMS?
17. Explain the use of CSElement, SiteEntry and Template Asset Types?
18. When will you use asset:getattributevalues and assetset:getmultiplevalues?
19. What are the limitations of the tag assetset:getmultiplevalues?
20. What is the difference between asset:list and assetset:getassetlist tag?
21. How will you perform Error handling in JSP?
22. What happens behind the scene when I hit an URL and invoke a page in Fatwire CMS?
23. I want to know how many flex assets are available in my Article AssetType. Is it possible to know that? If so, how can we know that?
24. Explain about the Recommendations, Collections, Queries, Segment, and Promotion?
25. How to re-use the asset types that are present in one site, in another site?
26. Explain about XMLPost and BulkLoader utilities?

Happy Job Hunting…. 

Creation of Dynamic Publishing Destination in Fatwire

Dynamic Publishing is the process of publishing the content (assets) to some other machine/destination. This Dynamic Publishing is of two types.

1. Mirror to Server : Mirror to Server is the method used to copy database rows to remote dynamic server

2. Real time Publishing : Real time Publishing is the method used to copy assets to remote dynamic server.

Out of these both, Mirror to Server is the one which is used mostly. Mirror to Server is built with the Content Server Mirror API to copy approved assets from the Content Server database on one system to the Content Server database on another system.

CREATION OF DYNAMIC PUBLISH DESTINATION:

The following steps are involved in the creation of a DYNAMIC PUBLISHING DESTINATION:

• Login to the Advanced user interface.
• Go to the admin tab of the tree.
• Expand PUBLISHING -> DESTINATIONS.
• Click on ADD NEW. The following screen appears:

• In the “DELIVERY TYPE” drop down, select “MIRROR TO SERVER: Copy database rows to remote dynamic server”.
• Enter a name for the publishing destination in NAME field
• In the “DESTINATION ADDRESS” field, enter the name of the server, its port, followed by “/cs/”. For example, if  http://samplenode.com:8080/cs/Xcelerate/LoginPage.html  is the page which you use for logging into the advanced UI (URL of Remote Server), then the Destination address would look like this http://samplenodecom:8080/cs/

• Enter the user name in “REMOTE USER” field.
• Enter the password in “REMOTE PASSWORD” field.
• Select the roles which approve the assets for publishing to this location.
• Select the roles which can publish to this destination.
• Select the sites for which this destination will be available.
• Click on ADD NEW DESTINATION button in the bottom.

In this way, the Dynamic Publishing destination can be created.

Once the dynamic destination has been created, we need to check whether the destination is working properly or not. This can be known by observing the GREEN BULB image seen as shown in the image below. If a RED BULB image is shown, then there is some problem in connecting to the destination, like network issues, remote server might be down, licensing issues of the remote server for fatwire, VPN connectivity issues, etc. If any of the above issues arise, you need to consult the Fatwire / System Administrator of your company.

In this way, the Mirror to Server destination needs to be created and configured.

The rest of the APPROVAL, STATUS, PUBLISHING process is same as Static Publishing.

How Dynamic Publishing works in Fatwire

In our previous posts, we have seen how to work with Static Publishing. In this post, we will see how to work with Dynamic Publishing.

DYNAMIC PUBLISHING, also known as MIRROR TO SERVER PUBLISHING method, is one of the important Publishing methodologies of Fatwire. It is built with the Content Server Mirror API to copy approved assets from the Content Server database on one system to the Content Server database on another system.

HOW IT WORKS:

The following image explains how the Mirror to Server publishing works in simple.

To be more precise,

1. When the Dynamic Publishing is done, the Local content server (on which the main database, file structure, etc are there) mirrors,i.e, copies the entire file structure to the remote server (the machine which hosts the site).

2. The user requests a page.

3. The request will be received by the server (i.e, the mirrored remote CS Server).

4. The CS dynamically generates the pagelets and pages, and delivers it to the webserver.

5. The webserver then delivers it to the end user who has requested the page.