Glossary

Caching refers to the process of temporarily storing files in a repository for quick access. When a file, such as a Web page, is stored on a cache, it can be accessed without returning to the original server, thus reducing server load and response time. A cache can exist in a section of a computer’s main memory or as an independent high-speed storage device.

Large organizations or institutions use large caches to distribute and update data that is frequently accessed by users. Caching is important for ensuring adequate response times in CMSs because serving custom pages on the fly can be extremely process-intensive, even on low-traffic sites.

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The placing of boundaries around objects that share similarities, e.g., taxonomy.

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The purpose of Document Management (DM) is to help companies better manage the creation and flow of documents -- in particular structured documents -- through the help of databases and workflow engines that encapsulate metadata and business rules. Much of what we know about automated editorial workflow comes from the DM world.

A critical drawback to DM products, however, is their limited traditional understanding of content as files, as opposed to discrete chunks of information.

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An object-oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. Java programs are portable across a network, and can be built to run on either the server, browser, or special client.

Java is written in bytecode, a type of source code that must be processed by a Java virtual machine. The virtual machine interprets the bytecode into code that will run within the constraints of a specific computer’s hardware system. Therefore, as long as a platform is equipped with a Java virtual machine (as are most of today’s servers are), Java applications will run on any operating system.

Because of its portability, Java has made substantial inroads into Enterprise computing, and, not surprisingly, commercial WCM vendors have been leveraging it both to expand their own capabilities across multiple platforms as well as integrate with other Java-based systems. The pre-eminent Java standard is “J2EE,” which prescribes a range of functions, but most notably for our purposes, lays out a set of Web publishing and application tiers ranging from Java Server Pages – JSP (for presentation and basic interactivity) to Servlets to Java Beans, where corporate business logic is stored.

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A relatively simple scripting language that can integrate with HTML code and add interactivity to a web page. It is frequently used for functions that execute in the browser, such as mouseover effects, calling pop-up windows and alert boxes, and basic mathematical calculations. Developed by Netscape, Javascript is an open language supported by most current browsers.

While it is has some structural and conceptual similarities to the Java programming language, JavaScript was developed independently. Generally speaking, JavaScript lacks Java’s portability and speed.

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Localization refers to the process of adapting a software, product or service for different languages, countries, or cultures.

In addition language considerations, such as support for foreign character sets, localization may require adaptations for currency, time zone, national holidays, cultural assumptions and sensitivities, dialect, color scheme, and general design conventions.

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A definition or description of data, often described as data about data. For example, the data of a newspaper story is the headline and the story, whereas the metadata describes who wrote it, when and where it was published, and what section of the newspaper it appears in. Metadata can help us determine who content is for and where, how, and when it should appear. For documents online, important metadata elements include its author, title, date of publication, and subject area.

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Open Source Open source is a term applied to certain packages and tools, like Linux and Perl, that are distributed free of charge under a license that guarantees the right to read, redistribute, modify, and use the software (source code and all) freely.

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Generating custom content or presentation for web users. There are at least three types of personalization.

Affinity or profile-based: customizes content for groups, rather than individual users. In this typ of personalization, collaborative filtering pages are developed based on the behavior and preferences of a group. Those customized pages are delivered to the individual users within the group.

Preference-based: customizes pages based on explicit, user-provided preferences.

Behavior-based: monitors user behavior and inferrs how to customize pages to suit individual interests and needs.

Personalization is fundamentally about mixing and matching content elements, and many CMS packages wandered into this space. But most major CMS packages are now returning the personalization function to the application server or 3rd party personalization engines.

Why? Because personalization is very resource-intensive from a design and publishing perspective. It takes a lot of effort to define and implement business rules against various permutations, and serving up custom pages adds more cycles to what may already be a very dynamic publishing process.

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Regularly publishing content to other websites.

Syndication offers benefits for both the publisher and subscriber. Publishers can extend the reach and value of their content by displaying it in multiple venues. Subscribing sites can elevate the level of content they offer visitors by drawing on outside resources.

However, syndication presents content management challenges for both publisher and subscribers. Publishers must guarantee a steady stream of consistently-structured content, according to some sort of agreed-upon format. Subscribers must be able to import and absorb this information within their own content management and presentation systems.

Various third party services have emerged to help both publishers and subscribers, including syndication aggregators and technology vendors, some of whom have licensed their solutions to CM vendors.

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In respect to search, the broad categorization of objects - typically a tree structure of classifications for a given set of objects - in order to make them easier to retrieve and possibly sort.

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A content management with version control assists the users of the system in coordinating production & tracking older versions of content or code. It can provide the following benefits:

• Coordination: making sure, by default, that only one person at a time is modifying a file. This prevents files from accidentally being replaced by another user's changes. This is typically done by requiring users to “check in” and “check out” files that they are working on, as they would books in a public library.
• Branching/Reconciliation: This functionality allows multiple simultaneous revisions to a file, and the changes will be reconciled before the file is published to the live site. A system with this feature allows multiple checkouts of a file by different people.
• Version tracking: archiving and tracking old versions of content, the content management system’s source code, and other files, which can be retrieved and re-published to the live site. This is done using time and date stamping, and other data about a file to maintain it.

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Workflow as it applies to content describes the process of breaking down a high-level task into a series of orderly, pre-defined steps that answer these questions:

• What needs to be done?
• Who needs to do it?
• Who needs to approve it?
• When must it be completed?

There are two general types of workflow: Approval and task.

A task-oriented workflow centers on the tasks that must be done by different resources, or people, to complete the task. For example, the graphic designer completes graphics production, the HTML producer creates the template using those graphics, and the editor produces pages based on that template.

An approval-centered workflow tracks the approval chain of command on a piece of content, no matter what the form – from a press release to a video clip of a speech. For example, the PR Director, the Legal Department and the President must approve all press releases. These people are all "approvers" in this context.

These two types of workflow can mingle at some point, creating the need for a more complex workflow and some additional cost for product customization.

Find out more about workflow as it applies to more than just content. The Workflow Management Coalition (http://www.wfmc.org/) works closely with the Workflow and Reengineering International Association (http://www.waria.com/) to set standards in workflow and its automation.

"e-workflow, the workflow portal" (http://www.e-workflow.org/) is sponsored by the above organizations and provides information about the evolution of workflow, the product arena, news about the industry, white papers and handy definitions of workflow terminology.

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XML is a markup language created so that richly structured documents can be described, exposed, shared, and modified over the web.

Since XML describes the underlying information and its structure, content can be separated from look-and-feel. This overcomes a severe limitation of HTML, which merely describes content presentation for a particular set of HTML-compliant applications (like Web browsers).

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