Never Expiring Blobs in Fatwire / Oracle WebCenter Sites

While building a website (Either by a WCM or normal html, etc), there will be certain images or other assets which seldom change, like Company Logo, etc. Say for example, CompanyLogo.png.

As we know, the images (even pdfs, etc) are nothing but blobs in Fatwire / Oracle WebCenter Sites.

The performance of the over all site can be improved by changing the way of serving these NEVER-EXPIRING BLOBS. The never expiring images / blobs which we discussed above in the first paragraph, need not be called from Satellite Server Cache / Content Server Cache. If we use an alternative method, the performance can be improved, as the number of calls have been reduced.

Follow the below mechanism for serving the NEVER-EXPIRING BLOBS in Fatwire / Oracle WebCenter Sites.

1. Copy those Never-Expiring Blobs to your Satellite Server hosts. Place them under the doc root for your web server.
2. In the code, instead of the satellite:blob tags, use <img src=”…”> tag to access the blob placed on your Satellite Server.

NOTE: While using this mechanism for serving never-expiring blobs, make sure that you place those blobs (ex: images) in all the Satellite Server host locations. If the blob is not present in any of the location, the Satellite Server cannot warn you that one of the Satellite Server hosts does not contain the same blob, that is contained in other hosts.

DocType (Flex Filter) in Oracle WebCenter Sites / Fatwire

The DocType Flex Filter is one of the four filters which are supplied by WebCenter Sites. It is the short form for DOCUMENT TYPE.

The DocType filter is used to know the file-types (for example pdf, doc, etc..), mime-types (for example      application/pdf , etc..) of a particular document  Knowing the file types and mime types of a document are important in some situations. This filter could be used in such situations.

CREATION OF ATTRIBUTES:

First Things First. Create the following attributes, that would be utilized by the filter.

1. SampleDocument – (BLOB)

2. SampleDocumentFileType – (STRING)

3. SampleDocumentMimeType – (STRING)

CREATION OF FILTER:

1. Go to the Filter creation screen.

2. Enter the Name and Description of your choice.

3. In the FILTER drop down, select DocType, and click on GET ARGUMENTS button.

4. In the ARGUMENTS section, in the name drop-down, select each of the options, and enter the values as follows:

• ATTRIBUTE TO HOLD DERIVED FILETYPE  –  SampleDocumentFileType
• ATTRIBUTE TO HOLD DERIVED MIMETYPE – SampleDocumentMimeType
• INPUT ATTRIBUTE NAME – SampleDocument

Finally the screen should look like following screen:

5. Save it.

6. Add the Filter to the content definition.

TESTING THE DOCTYPE FLEX FILTER:

1. Go to the asset creation screen, select the content definition for which you have added the filter.

2. Give a name.

3. Upload a document. Say a sample PDF document.

4. Save it. Click on Inspect. You will be able to see the uploaded document’s FILE TYPE & MIME TYPE. Check the below screen.

We haven’t added the SampleDocumentFileType & SampleDocumentMimeType in the content definition. But still they have appeared in the Asset Inspection Screen. Coz, these attributes are added by the DOCTYPE FLEX FILTER.

That’s it..

DocType Flex Filter perfectly works.

Revision Tracking in Oracle Web Center Sites 11g / Fatwire

I will introduce you how to enable the REVISION TRACKING feature in Oracle WebCenter Sites / Fatwire, through this post.

Being the content management professionals we already know about the revision tracking process, as it is one of the fundamentals of CMS. The actions that include are CHECK-IN, CHECK-OUT, CANCEL CHECKOUT, VERSIONING.

Oracle WebCenter Sites / Fatwire doesn’t enable this Revision Tracking feature by default. We will now see how to enable the mechanism in OWS / Fatwire.

ENABLE REVISION TRACKING:

1. Log in to your site’s Admin Interface.

2. Click on the Admin Tab.

3. Expand ASSET TYPES, and go down to the asset for which you would like to enable the revision tracking feature . (ex: Sample_C, Sample_A etc)

4. Expand the asset, and there you would find a link REVISION TRACKING.

5. Expand the REVISION TRACKING link as well. There you would find an option.

• Track  (See Screen Shot below)

6. Double click on Track.

7. In the workspace, it will display the number of revisions to be stored. Enter the number of revisions to be stored, and click on the  button.  A message saying “Revision Tracking succeeded for —your asset—” will be displayed.

8. That’s it. Revision Tracking is enabled for your asset.

When you inspect your asset, you can see the CHECK-IN, CHECK-OUT, SEE VERSIONS action items along with other default action items, as follows:

DISABLE REVISION TRACKING:

If you want to disable revision tracking (In case if you have enabled revision tracking through above steps), proceed till Step-4

5. Then, expand the REVISION TRACKING link as well. There you would find two options.

• Set Revisions
• Untrack (See Screen Shot below)

6. Double click on UNTRACK.

7. In the workspace, it will display a confirmation message. Click on the  button.  A message saying “Untrack succeeded for —your asset—“ will be displayed.

8. That’s it. Revision Tracking is disabled.

Field Copier (Flex Filter) in Oracle WebCenter Sites / Fatwire

We will now see the implementation of FieldCopier Flex Filter in Oracle WebCenter Sites / Fatwire.

Purpose: The purpose of this filter is to get information from the system attributes such as NAME, FLEX DEFINITION, CREATED DATE, etc. There are totally 18 system attributes, out of which, a few are inaccessible through code. Under such circumstances, we will use this FieldCopier filter to gather the values from the system attributes, and place the values in our custom attributes.

We will try to copy the name and content definition attributes (system attributes) to our custom attributes in the following implementation.

 
CREATE FLEX ATTRIBUTES:

Create the below two flex attributes.

1. Name-FieldCopier   –  (String)
2. ContentDefinition-FieldCopier –  (String)

CREATE FLEX FILTER:

Now, create the flex filter for field copier:

1. Click on new Flex Filter.

2. Give a name.

3. In the FILTER drop down, select the FIELDCOPIER option. Then Click on the GET ARGUMENTS button.

4. In the ARGUMENTS section, you will see a drop down box. In that dropdown, select the following options.

•   name    –   In the value text box, enter  Name-FieldCopier    –  Click on ADD button.
•   FlexDefinition     –   In the value text box, enter  ContentDefinition-FieldCopier   –  Click on ADD button

5. Save.

After saving the filter, the screen should look like follows:

ADDING THE FLEX FILTER TO THE CONTENT DEFINITION:

1. Add the filter to either new content definitions or existing content definitions.

2. After adding the filter, the content definition looks as follows.

FINALLY, TEST THE FILTER:

Now, its time to test the filter which we have created. Create a new asset of type SAMPLE_C, and select the above content definition.

Give a name to the asset. Click on Save. Then, click on Inspect button. The following screen appears.

The two attributes which we have created, Name-FieldCopier, ContentDefinition-FieldCopier are appended to the assets meta-data, as shown in the above screen.

That’s it. We have successfully created the FIELD COPIER filter.

What’s new in Oracle WebCenter Sites?

We will now discuss the new things that are introduced in Oracle WebCenter Sites.

Though functionally, the way it operates is same as that of its previous version Fatwire 7.6, there are many additions/removal of functionalities.

Speaking in depth, there are various differences between Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g and its previous version, Fatwire Content Server 7.6 / 7.5.

Following are some of the changes we can observe from the UI.

1. The name FATWIRE has been completely removed from the product, right from the user guides to the software (Of course, still some of the packages are having the name FATWIRE).

2. The UI has been completely modified. Earlier, in Fatwire 7.6, we used to have four interfaces.

• Advanced User Interface
• Dash User Interface
• Insite Interface
• WEM Interface (For selected users)

But now, in the latest version, i.e, Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g, we have only three interfaces.

• Admin Interface
• Contributor Interface
• WEM Interface (For selected users)

3. New Tab based interface.

4. Improved Drag and Drop facility

5. Customizable DASHBOARD

6. Finally, new look and feel.

 

NEW & IMPROVED FUNCTIONALITY:

Going Deeply, we can see the following changes (according to Oracle Documentation and my observations) :

1. The Contributor Interface has been given a modern look and feel with easily accessible controls and an updated color palette. Similarly, the Advanced, or Administrative, interface has been updated to better match the Contributor Interface.

2. The page building model and process has been redesigned. The management of page content can be accomplished using drag-and-drop functionality in combination with “dock-able” search results, sidebar trees, and strategically available toolbars. Once page creation is initiated, content can be dragged to predefined slots. Slots can be constrained by asset type and role-based user permissions per slot can be assigned. Non-technical users can easily control the presentation of content with graphical layouts and predefined arguments.

3. New capabilities to operate on multiple assets efficiently, including bulk deletion, approval, and bookmarking. These operations are conveniently available from search results screens. Operations can be executed by selecting multiple assets and pressing a single button.

4. Updated capabilities to locate assets (e.g., with a keyword) from the Contributor Interface’s search bar, including a convenient, embedded control to search by asset type.

5. A dashboard is now provided out-of-the-box. Widgets to manage assignments, bookmarks, and checkouts are included. Widgets can be rearranged on the dashboard using simple drag-and-drop.

6. The new Contributor Interface for marketers and business users provides a browser-like interface to efficiently manage multiple assets simultaneously. Assets can be opened in individual tabs and out-of-the-box revision tracking prevents asset changes from being overridden by concurrent edits.

7. It is now possible to drag content from search results and sidebar trees to both asset forms and page slots. Drag and drop can also now be used to quickly order the pages of a site plan.

8. View search results as either lists or thumbnails. Search results can be docked to make them conveniently available for dragging (e.g., to a page slot).  The dock automatically appears on the active tab.

9. Assets as well as their dependencies can now be approved with a single operation

10. The integrated WEM bar is now easier to use. A single click opens the WEM bar, and it will remain open until manually closed.

 

REMOVED FUNCTIONALITY:

 1. Dash UI and InSite UI have been removed; they are replaced with Contributor UI

2. URL attribute data type has been removed. Instead, BLOB should be used.

3. RememberMe attribute editor has been removed. Instead,  TypeAhead or PickFromTree should be used.

 

DEPRECATED FUNCTIONALITY:

1.  The ability to manage new content assets of type – basic, flex, page and engage – the Admin UI (formerly called the Advanced UI). We should now access this functionality from the Contributor UI.

2.   Mirror Publishing is deprecated. Instead Real Time publish should be used.

3.   Old caching implementation, use the new inCache based implementation (this   is active upon install by default)

4.   SOAP based web services are being deprecated; Instead, the public REST API should be used.

5.   Usage of asset API from stand-alone Java applications is deprecated. Instead, REST API should be used.

6.   Support for JBoss is not available in this release.

7.   Support for Safari is not available in this release.

8.   DebugServlet is not deployed.

 

RE-BRANDING:

This release includes Oracle branded versions of the former FatWire products, which are now consolidated under one product name, Oracle WebCenter Sites, with component terminology appearing in the UIs as follows:

        • WebCenter Sites (formerly FatWire Content Server)

        • Community (formerly FatWire Community Server)

        • Targeting (formerly FatWire Engage)

        • Analytics (formerly FatWire Analytics)

        • Gadgets (formerly FatWire Gadget Server)

        • Mobility Server (formerly FatWire Mobility Server)

        • Satellite Server (formerly FatWire Satellite Server)