POLOPOLY V9 TECHNICAL OVERVIEW System Architecture Templates and Presentation Modules
2008 Atex Group Ltd Polopoly, Polopoly Content Manager, Polopoly Relationship Manager, Polopoly User Module, Polopoly Statistics Module and Polopoly Newsletter Server are trademarks or registered trademarks of Atex Group Ltd. All other products or company names herein are trademarks of their respective owners.
Polopoly v9 technical overview POLOPOLY CONTENT MANAGEMENT Since 1996 the Polopoly system has kept pace with the growing demands and the expanding scope of large scale content management. Spanning the high volume and delivery requirements of the media industry to the complex information structures of multi site installations at government bodies and higher education institutions, the Polopoly platform and architecture has proven its excellent performance and flexibility again and again. Polopoly v9 represents the next level. It is designed to meet and exceed the technical challenges of the mature IT departments of the large scale enterprise, while still preserving the core virtues of Polopoly Content Management fast, scalable and flexible. As demands for integration, unification and information accessibility grow within organizations so do the requirements and the expected functionality of Content Management systems. Polopoly v9 is built to deliver on these new and complex demands. Added support for integration and information exchange targets the complex information structures and lets you put a content umbrella which covers diverse systems. A new user interface gives you a grip on all the information and combined with a more powerful workflow and new content model, Polopoly v9 lets you control information and reach the right audience. A SOLID FOUNDATION The Polopoly system is built upon the notion of content as managed objects (java objects) that have attached data/information of different kinds raw text, attached documents, images, references to external systems and other kinds of resources which need to be managed as content. This notion is realized using a clear object model, exposed as well defined APIs to the developer. A set of core content management services provide persistence, versioning, indexing, metadata searching, a workflow system, system events, user management, access control, a template system and XML-services. Polopoly content management takes care of the lifecycle and management of these objects including user interaction, integration and distribution in different digital formats to content consumers (visitors to a web site or possible hand-off to other systems for further processing). Higher level functionality is built around the core services and distributed as functionality modules. These modules include a general administration GUI for content creation and management, a statistics module for site statistics, an XML import module, mobile platform support (a lightweight J2ME client) and a high performance content delivery platform which provides support for heavy traffic POLOPOLY V9 TECHNICAL OVERVIEW 3
websites in a scalable way. Each of these functionality modules is built to be flexible, extendable and robust. POLOPOLY SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE Polopoly aims to be deployable in different scenarios, from a small single machine setup using only open source community software to a full enterprise setup distributed over several machines and clustered on all levels from SAN-storage and DB clusters to the delivery layer. To able to achieve this degree of flexibility in deployment the system makes use of existing standards and frameworks for modern enterprise software. POLOPOLY AND J2EE Version 9 of the Polopoly CM is built according to the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) architecture. This means that the system is implemented as components which are deployable in one of the many containers defined in J2EE. The standard approach when developing against the J2EE specification is normally to deploy all modules in a single application server. Polopoly is based on the idea that each container type may be provided by different implementers, which means that the customer is free to choose different vendors for different parts of the container. 4 POLOPOLY V9 TECHNICAL OVERVIEW
POLOPOLY AND STANDARD API S As can be seen above, Polopoly is built using the J2EE framework of standards. The client APIs are integrated with common standards and frameworks, such as EJB, server side tag libraries and Struts. The APIs also allow for custom integration with other systems and can be easily adapted to different standards and runtime settings. This makes it easy to integrate Polopoly Content with different systems and to expose custom services built upon Polopoly in a variety of system contexts (from web services via portals to completely non-j2ee contexts such as teletext systems). TEMPLATES AND PRESENTATION Content comes in different styles, depending on the usage scenario and the customer s business needs. The Polopoly template system provides Input templates are an easy and powerful way to adapt the system to the specific defined in XML files needs of the target environment. All CM systems need to find a balance between, on the one hand, ready made functionality while on the other, retaining flexibility and room for customization. Too much out-of-the-box functionality rarely suits anyone s needs and too little makes for a long and complex project to adapt the system to your local needs. A major part of this balancing act takes place in the template system. CM systems have a few things in common they all provide a way to enter, manage and deliver content. This is done by way of templating you need templates to enter structured information and other templates to format and deliver it in the appropriate form for the consumer (be it another system or a person accessing the company intranet). The new template system provided with Polopoly v9 has found that balance. Continuing the successful Polopoly concept of ready made building blocks from which custom templates are built, the template system is both out-of-the-box with a good selection of form parts and flexible, since all building blocks can easily be combined in an arbitrary way. Polopoly templates let you specify everything from workflow states and their interaction to the precise forms and fields that make up different types of documents. Templates are defined using XML and normal java beans to tie in logic and customized behaviour. POLOPOLY V9 TECHNICAL OVERVIEW 5
On the delivery side, Polopoly provides a background client runtime layer and utilities which make it fast and easy to build complex personalized sites in a scalable way. The utilities are designed to support any existing web framework, such as Struts, tag-libraries, etc. They provide Polopoly Content connectivity for web applications and Sample output template, using tag-libraries enable services such as content caching, user handling (distributed session tracking, authentication, personalization, etc.) and access to other modules, such as statistics. MODULES The Polopoly system is a modular system, where each module provides a set of services to the implementer. At the heart lies the CM core which provides central content management functionality. The remaining modules enhance this functionality in different ways, adding caching, personalization, mobile connectivity and so on. CONTENT MANAGER This is the core module of the Polopoly ECM engine. The CM module provides all the central services needed for a large scale content management system including advanced versioning, workflow, access control, templating, weighted text indexing, metadata management and more. The relationship manager (RM) adds a personalized perspective to the enterprise communication which lets you target information to groups or individuals. Complex information structures need to be adapted to the individual requesting the information, so the right people get the right information at the right time. THE USER MODULE Single sign-on, LDAP integration and authentication, personal content and data the user server is the module which manages users, integrates with Single Sign-Onsystems, LDAP directories and provides multi channel session handling and basic personalization services. The User Module has a tight integration with the core CM system. It also provides user and group management, authentication and access control services. STATISTICS MODULE Customized statistics is an invaluable tool. Who reads what at what time? Which pieces of information reach their target audience? Are there neglected areas? The Polopoly Statistics Module is a standalone module that registers system events and aggregates them to calculate statistics. The Polopoly Statistics Module can 6 POLOPOLY V9 TECHNICAL OVERVIEW
determine the popularity of articles and departments, log from where the visitors come from and to where they are going. All statistical information is displayed using graphs, tables or diagrams. The Statistics module also provides plug-in functionality which allows for customized statistics. Special customer-specific events can be sent to the module for further processing and aggregation by the plug-ins, called analyzers. NEWSLETTER SERVER The newsletter server adds another channel of expression. Keeping your customers updated on offers and specific activities is crucial and the Polopoly Newsletter Server provides the tools for setting up mailing lists, and specifying articles from where the content of the messages should be retrieved. The time for distribution of the mailings can be set in advance, and thus easily coordinated with other activities. To make sure the right content is distributed to the right person at the right time, personalized newsletters are easily created. The newsletter server can use the Polopoly User Module or external market databases for retrieving the desired information to be used for personalizing the content of the newsletter. For example, campaigns with special offers from a chain of department stores can make use of information on the geographical location of the customer to provide correct address and phone number of the nearest department store. To direct the message towards the individual customers, information on their shopping habits and preferences can be used for tailoring the offers from the local department stores, both as e-mails and SMS. The Newsletter Server acts as a standalone java module and connects to the main CM primarily by API or URL to fetch content and receivers for send lists. It acts as a content aggregator and depends on external mechanisms (such as a mail server, or an SMS gateway) for the actual delivery, just as the CM depends on a HTTPprovider for its delivery. COMMUNITY MODULE Integrated with other Polopoly modules, the Polopoly Community Module makes it easy to create very advanced community functionality and interaction comprising highly personalized services in regards to for example forums (internal and external), debates, blogging (web blogs, mobile blogs, video blogs etc), live statistics (top lists etc), rating, messaging and mobile services. Forums and blogs can be created either by the editorial staff or by the readers themselves. Using the CM server as a repository for user-edited data (as opposed to using a third-party product) has the benefit of extending the same features and tools available for other Polopoly content to it: the stored data can be managed using the CM graphical user interface, it can be exported, imported and backed up together with other content data, it is searchable using the index server, it can POLOPOLY V9 TECHNICAL OVERVIEW 7
contain references to content data and content data can refer to it, and of course Polopoly s performance and scalability benefits extend to it. The community functionality is basically divided into two parts: forums and blogs. User-created objects - threads, blogs and postings - can be subjected to moderation, i.e. editor control over whether they are to be published or not. The moderation state of objects can be changed through the CM GUI or by adapting the Plant Community web application to offer a more tailored. Also, application code can programmatically change the object state, e.g. to allow users to report objects. When the moderation state of an object is modified, the Community Module automatically handles updating of lists so that only publicly visible objects are displayed on the site. The Polopoly Community Module also enables a word filter and the possibility to blacklist users. Some postings might require special screening by moderators due to containing keywords such as sexually explicit words. It is possible to specify a list of such words in the content object labelled Bad Words List. It is also possible to block certain users who have repeatedly written inappropriate postings from posting. Since not all sites actually require user registration, it is possible to not just block users with a certain user name, but also users from a certain IP, with a certain e-mail address or with a certain real name. ALL IN ALL When the digital channels are mission-critical, you need a system which is robust enough to manage peak loads while being versatile enough to enable the launch of new digital services with minimum lead-time. Polopoly is such a system. The system has proven itself in extreme Internet conditions covering both internal and external services, while relying on a state-of-the-art open systems architecture entirely based on open standards. Polopoly represents a best-of-breed solution to multi-channel publishing with optional integrated ecrm. The system makes it possible to consolidate all content and customer management into one single hub, increasing operational efficiency, reducing overhead and providing a foundation for on-demand delivery of new digital services. Atex Group Ltd. 100 Longwater Avenue, GreenPark, Reading, BERKS RG2 6GP, United Kingdom. Phone +44 (0)1189 450 128 Atex Polopoly, Alströmergatan 22, SE-112 47 Stockholm, Sweden. Phone +46 (0) 8 506 782 00 www.atex.com 8 POLOPOLY V9 TECHNICAL OVERVIEW