Patent Application
20070073663
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
The following commonly owned, co-pending United States patents and patent applications, including the present application, are related to each other. Each of the other patents/applications are incorporated by reference herein in its entirety:
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/438,202 entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR TYPE INHERITANCE FOR CONTENT MANAGEMENT, by Ryan McVeigh et al., filed on May 22, 2006, Attorney Docket No. BEAS-1879US0;
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/438,593 entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING NESTED TYPES FOR CONTENT MANAGEMENT, by Ryan McVeigh et al., filed on May 22, 2006, Attorney Docket No. BEAS-1880US0; and
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/438,164 entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING LINK PROPERTY TYPES FOR CONTENT MANAGEMENT, by Ryan McVeigh et al., filed on May 22, 2006, Attorney Docket No. BEAS-1881US0.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. XX/XXX,XXX entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR FEDERATED EVENTS FOR CONTENT MANAGEMENT, by Ryan McVeigh et al., filed on Sep. XX, 2006, Attorney Docket No. BEAS-1887US0.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. XX/XXX,XXX entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR USING SOFT LINKS TO MANAGED CONTENT, by Ryan McVeigh et al., filed on Sep. 26, 2006, Attorney Docket No. BEAS-1884US0.
The current invention relates generally to managing content for use with portals and other content delivery mechanisms, and more particularly to a mechanism for searching managed content.
Content repositories manage and provide access to large data stores such as a newspaper archives, advertisements, inventories, image collections, etc. A content repository can be a key component of a web application such as a portal, which must quickly serve up different types of content in response to user interaction. However, difficulties can arise when trying to integrate more than one vendor's content repository. Each may have its own proprietary application program interface and content services (e.g., conventions for searching and manipulating content, versioning, lifecycles, and data formats). Furthermore, each time a repository is added to an application, the application software must be modified to accommodate these differences. What is needed is a coherent system and method for interacting with disparate repositories and for providing a uniform set of content services across all repositories, including those that lack such services.
The invention is illustrated by way of example and not by way of limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings in which like references indicate similar elements. References to embodiments in this disclosure are not necessarily to the same embodiment, and such references mean at least one. While specific implementations are discussed, it is understood that this is done for illustrative purposes only. A person skilled in the relevant art will recognize that other components and configurations may be used without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.
In the following description, numerous specific details are set forth to provide a thorough description of the invention. However, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the invention may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well-known features have not been described in detail so as not to obscure the invention.
Although a diagram may depict components as logically separate, such depiction is merely for illustrative purposes. It can be apparent to those skilled in the art that the components portrayed can be combined or divided into separate software, firmware and/or hardware components. For example, one or more of the embodiments described herein can be implemented in a network accessible device/appliance such as a router. Furthermore, it can also be apparent to those skilled in the art that such components, regardless of how they are combined or divided, can execute on the same computing device or can be distributed among different computing devices connected by one or more networks or other suitable communication means.
In accordance with various embodiments, there are provided mechanisms and methods for full text searching of content within a content management system. A content repository can maintain content data in a plurality of nodes. Each node can be of a specific node type that specifies a set of properties. The nodes have property values for the set of valid properties defined by the type. For example, a node may contain metadata as well as binary property values. The binary property value can be set to the actual storage data for each node, while the metadata can provide information about each specific node. Furthermore, an abstracted application programming interface can be provided for constructing full text search queries based on the metadata and the binary properties of the various nodes. The abstracted interface can allow a search engine to be replaced with another engine without altering the functionality of the virtual content repository. A search index can be generated by the search engine in order to enable faster querying of content. The search engine can also subscribe to a set of federated event listeners that provide notifications of various operations within the content repository to the search engine such that the index can be appropriately maintained and updated by the search engine. The search queries can be executed by the search engine against the search index and the results can be translated back to the actual content nodes within the repository.
As used throughout this specification, the term inheritance (or extension) is defined as when an object extends or inherits from a parent object, it gains the functionality as described by that parent object. The object is also capable of modifying that functionality to suit the object's specific needs. For content types, the functionality that can be extended and/or modified is the parent type's property definitions. As used herein, the term subtype is defined as a content type that has extended another content type. This is typically the child in the parent-child relationship. As used herein, the term Supertype (or Base Type) is defined as a content type that has been extended by another content type. This is typically the parent in the parent-child relationship. As used herein, the term overload is defined as the process by which a user modifies a property definition specified by a supertype. As used herein, the term abstract type is defined as a type that cannot be “instantiated”. A user cannot create a node of an abstract type. An abstract type may serve to be extended by other types (which could then have nodes instantiated) or a nested type within another type. As used herein, the term container type is defined as a type that contains other types as part of its data model. As used herein, the term contained type is defined as a type that is modeled within another type. This is done by the container type creating a property definition of type “nested type” which refers to the type to be nested. As used herein, the term container instance is defined as a node that is an instance of a container type. As used herein, the term contained instance is defined as a “node” that represents the property values of the nested property type within a container node. As used herein, the term link property type is defined as type of property definition that specifies a link to another node in the content management system. As used herein, the term link source is defined as the node containing the link property type property. As used herein, the term link target is defined as the target node to which a link source node's link property refers. Multiple link source nodes may reference the same target node. Further, link sources can target multiple link target nodes.]
While the present invention is described with reference to an embodiment in which techniques for providing full text searching of managed content are implemented in an application server in conformance with the J2EE Management Framework using executable programs written in the Java™ programming language, the present invention is not limited to the J2EE Management Framework nor the Java™ programming language. Embodiments may be practiced using other interconnectivity specifications or programming languages, i.e., JSP and the like without departing from the scope of the embodiments claimed. (Java™ is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.).
A content repository 112 represents a searchable data store. Such systems can relate structured content and unstructured content (e.g., digitally scanned paper documents, Extensible Markup Language, Portable Document Format, Hypertext Markup Language, electronic mail, images, video and audio streams, raw binary data, etc.) into a searchable corpus. Content repositories can be coupled to or integrated with content management systems. Content management systems can provide for content workflow management, versioning, content review and approval, automatic content classification, event-driven content processing, process tracking and content delivery to other systems. By way of illustration, if a user fills out a loan application on a web portal, the portal can forward the application to a content repository which, in turn, can contact a bank system, receive notification of loan approval, update the loan application in the repository and notify the user by rendering the approval information in a format appropriate for the web portal.
A virtual or federated content repository (hereinafter referred to as “VCR”) is a logical representation of one or more individual content repositories. For example, the VCR provides a single access point to multiple repositories from the standpoint of application layer 120 but does not shield from the user that there is more than one repository available. The VCR can also add content services to repositories that natively lack them. Typically, the user interacts with the VCR by specifying which repository an action is related to (such as adding a new node), or performing an action that applies to all repositories (such as searching for content). In various embodiments and by way of illustration, this can be accomplished in part by use of an API (application program interface) 100 and an SPI (service provider interface) 102. An API describes how entities in the application layer can interface with some program logic or functionally. The application layer can include applications (and subdivisions thereof) that utilize the API, such as processes, threads, servlets, portlets, objects, libraries, and other suitable application components. An SPI describes how a service provider (e.g., a content repository, a content management system) can be integrated into a system of some kind. The SPI isolates direct interaction with repositories from the API. In various embodiments, this can be accomplished at run-time wherein the API library dynamically links to or loads the SPI library. In another embodiment, the SPI can be part of a server process such that the API and the SPI can communicate over a network. The SPI can communicate with the repositories using any number of means including, but not limited to, shared memory, remote procedure calls and/or via one or more intermediate server processes.
Content repositories may comprise a variety of interfaces for connecting with the repository. For example, as shown in
API's and SPI's can be specified as a collection of classes/interfaces, data structures and/or methods/functions that work together to provide a programmatic means through which VCR service(s) can be accessed and utilized. By way of illustration, APIs and SPIs can be specified in an object-oriented programming language, such as Java™ (available from Sun Microsystems, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.) and C# (available from Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash.). The API and SPI can be exposed in a number of ways, including but not limited to static libraries, dynamic link libraries, distributed objects, servers, class/interface instances, and other suitable means.
In various embodiments, the API presents a unified view of all repositories to the application layer such that navigation, CRUD operations (create, read, update, delete), versioning, workflows, and searching operations initiated from the application layer operate on the repositories as though they were one. Repositories that implement the SPI can “plug into” the VCR. The SPI includes a set of interfaces and services that support API functionality at the repository level. The API and SPI share a content model that represents the combined content of all repositories as a hierarchical namespace of nodes. Given a node N, nodes that are hierarchically inferior to N are referred to as children of N, whereas nodes that are hierarchically superior to N are referred to as parents of N. The top-most level of the hierarchy is termed the federated root. There is no limit to the depth of the hierarchy. In various embodiments, repositories are children of the federated root. Each repository can itself have children.
By way of illustration, content mining facilities 104, processes/threads 106, tag libraries 108, integrated development environments (IDEs) 110, and other libraries 118 can all utilize the API to interact with a VCR. An IDE can provide the ability for a user to interactively build workflows and/or content views. Content mining facilities can include services for automatically extracting content from the VCR based on parameters. Java ServerPages™ tag libraries enable portals to interact with the VCR and surface its content on web pages. (Java ServerPages™ is available from Sun Microsystems, Inc.) In addition, it will be apparent to those of skill in the art that many other types of applications and software components utilize the API and are, as such, fully within the scope and spirit of the present disclosure.
In various embodiments, the API can include optimizations to improve the performance of interacting with the VCR. One or more caches 116 can be used to buffer search results and/or recently accessed nodes. Some implementations may include additional cache 119 in one or more repositories. In various embodiments, a cache can include a node cache and/or a binary cache. A node cache can be used to provide fast access to recently accessed nodes whereas a binary cache can be used to provide fast access to the binary content/data associated with each node in a node cache. The API can also provide a configuration facility 114 to enable applications, tools and libraries to configure caches and the VCR. In various embodiments, this facility can be can be configured via Java Management Extension (JMX) (available from Sun Microsystems, Inc.).
In various embodiments, a model for representing hierarchy information, content and data types is shared between the API and the SPI. In this model, a node can represent hierarchy information, content or schema information. Hierarchy nodes can serve as containers for other nodes in the namespace akin to a file subdirectory in a hierarchical file system. Schema nodes represent predefined data types. Content nodes represent content/data. Nodes can have a shape defined by their properties. A property associates a name, a data type and an optional a value that is appropriate for the type. In certain of these embodiments, the properties of content nodes contain values. By way of an illustration, a type can be any of the types described in Table 1. Those of skill in the art will appreciate that many more types are possible and fully within the scope and spirit of the present disclosure.
In various embodiments, a property can also indicate whether it is required, whether it is read-only, whether it provides a default value, and whether it specifies a property choice. A property choice indicates if a property is a single unrestricted value, a single restricted value, a multiple unrestricted value, or a multiple restricted value. Properties that are single have only one value whereas properties that are multiple can have more than one value. If a property is restricted, its value(s) are chosen from a finite set of values. But if a property is unrestricted, any value(s) can be provided for it. A property can also be designated as a primary property. By way of illustration, the primary property of a node can be considered its default content. For example, if a node contained a binary property to hold an image, it could also contain a second binary property to represent a thumbnail view of the image. If the thumbnail view was the primary property, software applications such as browser could display it by default.
A named collection of one or more property types is a schema. A schema node is a place holder for a schema. In various embodiments, schemas can be used to specify a node's properties. By way of illustration, a Person schema with three properties (Name, Address and DateofBirth) can be described for purposes of discussion as follows:
Various embodiments allow a node to be defined based on a schema. By way of illustration, a content node John can be given the same properties as the schema Person:
In this case, the node John would have the following properties: Name, Address and DateofBirth. Alternatively, a node can use one or more schemas to define individual properties. This is sometimes referred to as nested types. In the following illustration, John is defined having an Info property that itself contains the properties Name, Address and DateofBirth. In addition, John also has a CustomerId property:
Schemas can be defined logically in the VCR and/or in the individual repositories that form the VCR. In certain embodiments, schemas can inherit properties from at least one other schema. Schema inheritance can be unlimited in depth. That is, schema A can inherit from schema B, which itself can inherit from schema C, and so on. If several schemas contain repetitive properties, a “base” schema can be configured from which the other schemas can inherit. For example, a Person schema containing the properties Name, Address and DateofBirth, can be inherited by an Employee schema which adds its own properties (i.e., Employee ID, Date of Hire and Salary):
Thus, as defined above the Employee schema has the following properties: Name, Address, DateofBirth, EmployeeID, DateofHire and Salary. If the Person schema had itself inherited properties from another schema, those properties would also belong to Employee.
In various embodiments, nodes have names/identifiers and can be specified programmatically or addressed using a path that designates the node's location in a VCR namespace. By way of illustration, the path can specify a path from the federated root (‘/’) to the node in question (‘c’):
In this example, the opening ‘/’ represents the federated root, ‘a’ represents a repository beneath the federated root, ‘b’ is a hierarchy node within the ‘a’ repository, and ‘c’ is the node in question. The path can also identify a property (“property1”) on a node:
In aspects of these embodiments, the path components occurring prior to the node name can be omitted if the system can deduce the location of the node based on context information.
In various embodiments, a schema defined in one repository or the VCR can inherit from one or more schemas defined in the same repository, a different repository or the VCR. In certain aspects of these embodiments, if one or more of the repositories implicated by an inherited schema do not support inheritance, the inheriting schema can be automatically defined in the VCR by the API. In one embodiment, the inheriting schema is defined in the VCR by default.
By way of illustration, the Employee schema located in the Avitech repository inherits from the Person schema located beneath the Schemas hierarchy node in the BEA repository:
In various embodiments, the link property type (see Table 1) allows for content reuse and the inclusion of content that may not be under control of the VCR. By way of illustration, the value associated with a link property can refer/point to any of the following: a content node in a VCR, an individual property on a content node in a VCR, a file on a file system, an object identified by a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), or any other suitable identifier. In various embodiments, when editing a content node that has a link property type, a user can specify the link destination (e.g., using a browser-type user interface). In certain aspects of these embodiments, if a link refers to a content node or a content node property that has been moved, the link can be resolved automatically by the system to reflect the new location.
In various embodiments, a value whose type is lookup (see Table 1) can hold an expression that can be evaluated to search the VCR for instances of content node(s) that satisfy the expression. Nodes that satisfy the expression (if any) can be made available for subsequent processing. In various embodiments, a lookup expression can contain one or more expressions that can substitute expression variables from: the content node containing the lookup property, a user profile, anything in the scope of a request or a session. In various embodiments, an expression can include mathematical, logical and Boolean operators, function/method invocations, macros, SQL (Structured Query Language), and any other suitable query language. In various embodiments, an expression can be pre-processed one or more times to perform variable substitution, constant folding and/or macro expansion. It will be apparent to those of skill in the art that many other types of expressions are possible and fully within the scope and spirit of this disclosure.
In various embodiments, when editing a content node that has a lookup property type, the user can edit the expression through a user interface that allows the user to build the expression by either entering it directly and/or by selecting its constituent parts. In addition, the user interface can enable the user to preview the results of the expression evaluation.
Database mapped property types (see Table 1) allow information to be culled (i.e., mapped) from one or more database tables (or other database objects) and manipulated through node properties. By way of illustration, a company might have “content” such as news articles stored as rows in one or more RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) tables. The company might wish to make use of this “content” via their portal implementation. Further, they might wish to manage the information in this table as if it existed in the VCR. Once instantiated, a content node property that is of the database mapped type behaves as though its content is in the VCR (rather than the database table). In one embodiment, all API operations on the property behave the same but ultimately operate on the information in the database table.
In various embodiments, a given database mapped property type can have an expression (e.g., SQL) which, when evaluated, resolves to a row and a column in a database table (or resolves to any kind of database object) accessible by the system over one or more networks. A database mapped property will be able to use either native database tables/objects or database views on those tables/objects. It will be appreciated by those of skill in the art that the present disclosure is not limited to any particular type of database or resolving expression.
In aspects of certain embodiments, a schema can be automatically created that maps to any row in a database table. The system can inspect the data structure of the table and pre-populate the schema with database mapped properties corresponding to columns from the table. The table column names can be used as the default property names and likewise the data type of each column will determine the data type of each corresponding property. The system can also indicate in the schema which properties correspond to primary key columns. If certain columns from the table are not to be used in the new schema, they can be un-mapped (i.e. deselected) by a user or a process. A content node can be based on such a schema and can be automatically bound to a row in a database table (or other database object) when it is instantiated. In various embodiments, a user can interactively specify the database object by browsing the database table.
While not required by all embodiments, some embodiments employ a display template (or “template”) to display content based on a schema. Templates can implement various “views”. By way of illustration, views could be “full”, “thumbnail”, and “list” but additional “views” could be defined by end-users. A full view can be the largest, or full page view of the content. A thumbnail view would be a very small view and a list view can be used when displaying multiple content nodes as a “list” on the page (e.g., a product catalog search results page). In various embodiments, the association between a schema and templates can be one-to-many. A template can be designated as the default template for a schema. In certain of these embodiments, templates can be designed with the aid of an integrated development environment (IDE). It is noteworthy that template technology is not limited to web applications. Other delivery mechanisms such as without limitation mobile phones, XML, and the like can be enabled by this technology.
In various embodiments and by way of illustration, display templates can be implemented using HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and JSP (Java® Server Pages). By way of a further illustration, such a display template can be accessed from a web page through a JSP tag that can accept as an argument the identifier of a content node. Given the content node, the node's schema and associated default display template can be derived and rendered. Alternatively, the JSP tag can take an additional argument to specify a view other than the default. In another embodiment, display templates can be automatically generated (e.g., beforehand or dynamically at run-time) based on a content node's schema. In other embodiments, the view (e.g., full, thumbnail, list) can be determined automatically based on the contents of an HTTP request.
In various embodiments, a role is a dynamic set of users. By way of illustration, a role can be based on functional responsibilities shared by its members. In aspects of these embodiments, a role can be defined by one or more membership criteria. Role mapping is the process by which it is determined whether or not a user satisfies the membership criteria for a given role. For purposes of discussion, a role can be described as follows:
where PMembers is a set of user(s), group(s) and/or other role(s) that form a pool of potential members of this role subject to the Membership Criteria, if any. A user or a process can be in a role, if that user or process belongs to PMembers or satisfies the Membership Criteria. It is noteworthy that a user or process does not need to be a member of PMembers to be considered a member of the role. For example, it is possible to define a role with a criterion such as: “Only on Thursdays” as its membership criteria. All users would qualify as a member of this role on Thursdays. The Membership Criteria can include one or more conditions. By way of illustration, such conditions can include, but are not limited to, one or more (possibly nested and intermixed) Boolean, mathematical, functional, relational, and/or logical expressions. By way of illustration, consider the following Administrator role:
The role has as its potential members two users (Joe and Mary) and users belonging to the user group named SuperUser. The membership criteria include a condition that requires the current time to be after 5:00 pm. Thus, if a user is Joe, Marry or belongs to the SuperUser group, and the current time is after 5:00 pm, the user is a member of the Administrator role.
In various embodiments, roles can be associated with Resource(s). By way of illustration, a resource can be any system and/or application asset (e.g., VCR nodes and node properties, VCR schemas and schema properties, operating system resources, virtual machine resources, J2EE application resources, and any other entity that can be used by or be a part of software/firmware of some kind). Typically, resources can be arranged in one or more hierarchies such that parent/child relationships are established (e.g., the VCR hierarchical namespace and the schema inheritance hierarchy). In certain of these embodiments, a containment model for roles is followed that enables child resources to inherit roles associated with their parents. In addition, child resources can override their parents' roles with roles of their own.
In various embodiments, Membership Criteria can be based at least partially on a node's properties. This allows for roles that can compare information about a user/process to content in the VCR, for example. In various embodiments, a node's property can be programmatically accessed using dot notation: Article.Creator is the Creator property of the Article node. By way of illustration, assume an Article node that represents a news article and includes two properties: Creator and State. A system can automatically set the Creator property to the name of the user that created the article. The State property indicates the current status of the article from a publication workflow standpoint (e.g., whether the article is a draft or has been approved for publication). In this example, two roles are defined (see Table 2).
The Submitter and Approver roles are associated with the Article node. Content nodes instantiated from this schema will inherit these roles. If a user attempting to access the article is the article's creator and the article's state is Draft, the user can be in the Submitter role. Likewise, if a user belongs to an Editor group and the article's state is Submitted or Approved, then the user can belong to the Approver role.
In various embodiments, a policy can be used to determine what capabilities or privileges for a given resource are made available to the policy's Subjects (e.g., user(s), group(s) and/or role(s)). For purposes of discussion, a policy can be described as follows:
Policy mapping is the process by which Policy Criteria, if any, are evaluated to determine which Subjects are granted access to one or more Privileges on a Resource. Policy Criteria can include one or more conditions. By way of illustration, such conditions can include, but are not limited to, one or more (possibly nested and intermixed) Boolean, mathematical, functional, relational, and/or logical expressions. Aspects of certain embodiments allow policy mapping to occur just prior to when an access decision is rendered for a resource.
Similar to roles, in certain of these embodiments a containment model for policies is followed that enables child resources to inherit policies associated with their parents. In addition, child resources can override their parents' polices with policies of their own.
In various embodiments, policies on nodes can control access to privileges associated with the nodes. By way of illustration, given the following policies:
the Marketing role can read/view and browse the Printer504 resource whereas the Engineering role has full access to it (“All”). These privileges are summarized in Table 3. Policy1 allows a user in the Marketing role to merely view the properties of Printer504 whereas Policy2 allows a user in the Engineering role to view and modify its properties, to create content nodes based on Printer504 (assuming it is a schema), and to delete the resource.
Aspects of certain of these embodiments include an implied hierarchy for privileges wherein child privilege(s) of a parent privilege are automatically granted if the parent privilege is granted by a policy.
In various embodiments, the containment models for polices and roles are extended to allow the properties of a node to inherit the policies and roles that are incident on the node. Roles/polices on properties can also override inherited roles/polices. For purposes of illustration, assume the following policy on a Power property of Printer504:
In Policy3, the Marketing role is granted the right to update the Power property for the printer resource Printer504 (e.g., control whether the printer is turned on or off). By default, the Read/View property is also granted according to an implied privilege hierarchy. (There is no Browse privilege for this property.) See Table 4. Alternatively, if there was no implied privilege hierarchy, the Power property would inherit the read/view privilege for the Marketing role from its parent, Printer504. Although no policy was specified for the Power property and the Engineering role, the privileges accorded to the Engineering role can be inherited from a parent node. These privileges are summarized in Table 4.
In various embodiments, the ability to instantiate a node based on a schema can be privileged. This can be used to control which types of content can be created by a user or a process. By way of illustration, assume the following policy:
Policy4 specifies that nodes created based on the schema Press_Release can only be instantiated by users/processes who are members of the Marketing and/or Manager roles. In aspects of certain of these embodiments, user interfaces can use knowledge of these policies to restrict available user choices (e.g., users should only be able to see and choose schemas on which they have the Instantiate privilege).
In various embodiments, policies can be placed on schemas. For purposes of illustration, assume the following policies:
Policy6=Press_Release+All+Public_Relations
With reference to Table 5 and by way of illustration, assume a content node instance was created based on the Press Release schema. By default, it would have the same roles/polices as the Press Release schema. If a policy was added to the node giving a role “Editor” the privilege to update the node, the result would be additive. That is, Everyone and Public Relations would maintain their original privileges.
In various embodiments, policies can be placed on properties within a schema, including property choices. (Property choices are a predetermined set of allowable values for a given property. For example, a “colors” property could have the property choices “red”, “green” and “blue”.)
The ContentManagerFactory 202 can serve as a representation of an access device from an application program's 200 point of view. In aspects of these embodiments, the ContentManagerFactory attempts to connect all available repositories to the device (e.g., 212-216); optionally with user or process credentials. In various embodiments, this can be based on the Java™ Authentication and Authorization Service (available from Sun Microsystems, Inc.). Those of skill in the art will recognize that many authorization schemes are possible without departing from the scope and spirit of the present disclosure. An SPI Repository object 206-210 represents each available content repository. In an embodiment, the ContentManagerFactory can invoke a connect( ) method on the set of Repository objects. It is noteworthy that, in some embodiments, the notion of “connecting” to a repository is not exposed to users. In various embodiments, the ContentManagerFactory returns a list of repository session objects to the application program, one for each repository for which a connection was attempted. Any error in the connection procedure can be described by the session object's state. In another embodiment, the ContentManagerFactory can connect to a specific repository given the repository name. In various embodiments, the name of a repository can be a URI (uniform resource identifier).
As illustrated, a content repository 300 stores and maintains content data in a plurality of nodes such as node 304. Each of these nodes can contain a combination of metadata 318, as well as binary property values. Furthermore, users can define their own specific metadata properties and mark them as being searchable. This will be discussed in further detail below. In one embodiment, the content repository is a virtual content repository (VCR) available from BEA Systems, Inc. The system metadata properties can be produced by the system upon the creation of each node and can maintain various useful information about each node, such as which user created the node, when it was created, which user last modified the node, when it was last modified, as well as a variety of other system information. The binary property values, on the other hand, can maintain the actual data storage for the node. As a non-limiting example, one value of a binary data property of a node can be set by a user to be a Microsoft™ Word document. Similarly, another binary property value can be an Adobe™ portable document format (PDF) file. The embodiments within this disclosure can allow, among other things, search queries to be constructed that are able to perform full text searches among the various nodes, including their metadata as well as binary properties.
An abstracted, simple and usable application programming interface (API) 310 can be created that allows users to construct search queries against the content repository. One or more search engines 306 can be responsible for performing the actual execution of the search queries. The API can be built on top of the search engine's API (query language) and can be designed to plug into the search engine. In this manner, one search engine can be replaced with another search engine (e.g. a third party search engine) all without the need for developers to re-learn the language used to construct search queries.
A search engine 306 can preferably maintain its own search index 308 in order to allow faster access and searching results of the repository content. In one embodiment, node data can be exported to a temporary staging area for indexing, such as a file system. For example, a stub file can be created containing system meta data 318 and user-defined searchable meta data. This stub file can be marked with a specific extension such as “.idx” prepended by the combination of node name and node ID in order to avoid collisions. For any binary properties, the binary can also be output to the file system and the stub can be named the same as the binary but with a specific suffix appended. It may be preferable that an efficient file system structure be implemented for mapping to the CM (content management) nodes, such that search results returned by the search engine can be easily translated back to nodes within the content repository. It should be noted that this disclosure is not limited to the file system exported index as described above. A person skilled in the art will recognize that various other indexing techniques can be utilized well within the scope of the present invention.
In certain embodiments, a user can be allowed to disable search indexing on the content repository. This adds more flexibility to the content repository and the search engine. Subsequently, a customer (user/system administrator/developer) can choose to re-index content by using ISearchManager.indexContentByPath (where all content at the given path or below it will be indexed), or ISearchManager.indexContentByType (where all content of a given type will be indexed).
In certain embodiments, a searchable flag can be added to the node types and/or properties in the content repository. For example, a searchable flag can be a Boolean value that can specify whether a search engine should index the node or property. This can provide a way to limit the amount of data that the search engine has to index and store for quick retrieval. Typically, there is a significant amount of data within the repository that does not need to be indexed in order for the search engine to function properly. Needlessly indexing such content can impede on the performance of the search engine and queries. The embodiments of the present invention provide for an ability to limit the amount of data indexed, such that only data that is needed for searching can be marked by the searchable flag and indexed by the search engine. For example, as illustrated in
The search engine 306 can also be registered with one or more federated event listeners 302. Event listeners can monitor the activity within the content repository 300 and notify its subscribers of certain specified operations occurring within the repository. In one embodiment, the event listeners are federated, meaning they can monitor activity within the virtual content repository. In this fashion, content that may be stored in several different underlying content repositories can be monitored via the VCR as though it were stored in one repository. This can be accomplished by allowing multiple content repositories to plug into the SPI layer of the virtual content repository, as previously discussed.
As content is created, modified, or deleted within the virtual content repository, one or more appropriate events can be generated to reflect the operation. For example, a ContentCreateEvent dispatches an event when a user adds content to the virtual content repository. This event lets a user/subscriber capture information, such as the content type, the path where the new content was created, the content's status, and so on. A ContentDeleteEvent dispatches an event when a user removes content from the virtual content repository. This event lets users capture information, such as the content type, the path where the content existed before it was removed, the content's status, and so on. A ContentUpdateEvent dispatches an event when a user changes content from the virtual content repository. This event lets users capture information, such as the content type, the path where the content existed before it was updated, the content's status, and so on. A ContentConfigEvent dispatches a new event when a user makes a configuration change to the virtual content repository. This event lets users capture information, such as the action that was performed on the repository. It should be noted that in other embodiments, various other event and event listener implementations can also be utilized.
The full text search engine 306 can hook into these events in order to receive notifications when an event is triggered within the virtual content repository. Consequently, it can use these notifications in order to maintain and update the search index 308 accordingly. For example, when the search engine receives an event notification from the federated event listeners 302, that a new node has been added to the VCR, it can create appropriate data within the search index, corresponding to the new node. In one embodiment, the search engine could first determine whether the node type has been flagged as searchable and if so, generate, in the search index, the system meta data properties as well as properties that have been flagged as searchable for the new node. Similarly, when nodes are deleted or updated, the full text search engine can update the search index appropriately.
In various embodiments, a client 312, using the API 310, can construct search queries by combining full text search expressions with the metadata and binary properties placed on the various content nodes. This can enable a more rich and flexible user experience for searching content within the virtual content repository. As an illustration, a property of a node may be set to a Microsoft™ Word document containing various text data. A search clause can then be executed to look for a particular piece of text within the binary property values of the various nodes. An alternative search clause may look for some text within some document with the additional requirement that the node which contains that document be of a certain type, certain age, have a property set to a certain value, and so on. Various other combinations of search expressions can be constructed and executed against the virtual content repository as well.
As illustrated in step 400, a content repository can be maintained by an enterprise. In some embodiments, a virtual content repository, can federate several otherwise separate content repositories and allow users to access them as though they were a single entity. Data within the repository can be maintained in nodes of various object types, each node having a set of properties for storing data and meta data. For example, a node may have binary properties that store the actual data associated with that node (e.g. a file). Similarly, a node may also have metadata properties defined by the system or by the user. Nodes, as well as the various properties of each node can be flagged as being searchable or not.
Step 402 illustrates that a search engine may need to create its own index to reflect the data within the repository in order to process search queries in an efficient manner. This can be accomplished by exporting selected data to the file system or creating some other form of index. In one embodiment, only data that has been flagged as searchable is exported in order to limit the amount of data contained in the index and to improve performance. In step 404, the search engine can hook into a set of federated event listeners in order to receive notifications about specified changes within the VCR. For example, as illustrated in step 406, an operation, such as a create, read, update and delete (CRUD) operation can be executed by a user within the content repository and an appropriate event can be generated by the VCR. The federated event listeners can in turn cause the search engine to be notified of the corresponding change in the repository caused by the operation, as illustrated in step 408. The search engine can then use this information in maintaining its index. For example, as shown in step 410, the search engine can update the search index in order to reflect the CRUD operation performed within the repository (e.g. by creating, updating or deleting corresponding data within the index).
As illustrated in step 420, a simple, user-friendly query API can be provided by the virtual content repository over the search engine's API (query language). This allows an enterprise to switch one search engine with another while maintaining the same query API and without forcing the developers to learn a new interface. As shown in step 422, a user/client can use this API in constructing a search query that includes not only the textual data properties, but also the metadata of the content nodes. This can be done by allowing one or more clauses of a search query to be based on metadata properties (e.g. system metadata). For example, a user may create a query that looks for a specific word (string) in any recent document that is found within the repository, or looks for documents that contain words that begin or end with the specified string, and so on. Furthermore, these text clauses can be combined with metadata search clauses when forming a query. As an illustration, one clause can request all nodes of a specific type that contain a specified string(s) in the binary property value. Another clause may request all nodes which are of a specific age or have been recently modified by a specific user, etc. A more versatile system of content searching is possible in this manner.
In step 424, the search engine can execute the search query that has been constructed by the user or client. In one embodiment, the search engine can look up the query limitations in the search index and return an appropriate relevant result set. This result set can be translated back into actual nodes within the repository, as shown in step 426. Thus, the user is able to access the content within the VCR. In some embodiments, it may be preferable that the search index is efficiently mapped to the content repository structure, in order to facilitate the translation of the result set. For example, the index exported to the file system may have a similar directory structure to that of the content repository in order for easy conversion of data. It should be noted that this is an implementation detail that can be modified well within the scope of the present disclosure.
In other aspects, the invention encompasses in some embodiments, computer apparatus, computing systems and machine-readable media configured to carry out the foregoing methods. In addition to an embodiment consisting of specifically designed integrated circuits or other electronics, the present invention may be conveniently implemented using a conventional general purpose or a specialized digital computer or microprocessor programmed according to the teachings of the present disclosure, as will be apparent to those skilled in the computer art.
Appropriate software coding can readily be prepared by skilled programmers based on the teachings of the present disclosure, as will be apparent to those skilled in the software art. The invention may also be implemented by the preparation of application specific integrated circuits or by interconnecting an appropriate network of conventional component circuits, as will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art.
The present invention includes a computer program product which is a storage medium (media) having instructions stored thereon/in which can be used to program a computer to perform any of the processes of the present invention. The storage medium can include, but is not limited to, any type of rotating media including floppy disks, optical discs, DVD, CD-ROMs, microdrive, and magneto-optical disks, and magnetic or optical cards, nanosystems (including molecular memory ICs), or any type of media or device suitable for storing instructions and/or data.
Stored on any one of the machine readable medium (media), the present invention includes software for controlling both the hardware of the general purpose/specialized computer or microprocessor, and for enabling the computer or microprocessor to interact with a human user or other mechanism utilizing the results of the present invention. Such software may include, but is not limited to, device drivers, operating systems, and user applications.
Included in the programming (software) of the general/specialized computer or microprocessor are software modules for implementing the teachings of the present invention, including, but not limited to providing mechanisms and methods for [ ] as discussed herein.
Computing system 500 comprises components coupled via one or more communication channels (e.g., bus 501) including one or more general or special purpose processors 502, such as a Pentium®, Centrino®, Power PC®, digital signal processor (“DSP”), and so on. System 500 components also include one or more input devices 503 (such as a mouse, keyboard, microphone, pen, and so on), and one or more output devices 504, such as a suitable display, speakers, actuators, and so on, in accordance with a particular application. (It will be appreciated that input or output devices can also similarly include more specialized devices or hardware/software device enhancements suitable for use by the mentally or physically challenged.)
System 500 also includes a machine readable storage media reader 505 coupled to a machine readable storage medium 506, such as a storage/memory device or hard or removable storage/memory media; such devices or media are further indicated separately as storage 508 and memory 509, which may include hard disk variants, floppy/compact disk variants, digital versatile disk (“DVD”) variants, smart cards, read only memory, random access memory, cache memory, and so on, in accordance with the requirements of a particular application. One or more suitable communication interfaces 507 may also be included, such as a modem, DSL, infrared, RF or other suitable transceiver, and so on for providing inter-device communication directly or via one or more suitable private or public networks or other components that may include but are not limited to those already discussed.
Working memory 510 further includes operating system (“OS”) 511 elements and other programs 512, such as one or more of application programs, mobile code, data, and so on for implementing system 500 components that might be stored or loaded therein during use. The particular OS or OSs may vary in accordance with a particular device, features or other aspects in accordance with a particular application (e.g. Windows®, WindowsCE™, Mac™, Linux, Unix or Palm™ OS variants, a cell phone OS, a proprietary OS, Symbian™, and so on). Various programming languages or other tools can also be utilized, such as those compatible with C variants (e.g., C++, C#), the Java™ 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (“J2EE”) or other programming languages in accordance with the requirements of a particular application. Other programs 512 may further, for example, include one or more of activity systems, education managers, education integrators, or interface, security, other synchronization, other browser or groupware code, and so on, including but not limited to those discussed elsewhere herein.
When implemented in software (e.g. as an application program, object, agent, downloadable, servlet, and so on in whole or part), a learning integration system or other component may be communicated transitionally or more persistently from local or remote storage to memory (SRAM, cache memory, etc.) for execution, or another suitable mechanism can be utilized, and components may be implemented in compiled or interpretive form. Input, intermediate or resulting data or functional elements may further reside more transitionally or more persistently in a storage media, cache or other volatile or non-volatile memory, (e.g., storage device 508 or memory 509) in accordance with a particular application.
Other features, aspects and objects of the invention can be obtained from a review of the figures and the claims. It is to be understood that other embodiments of the invention can be developed and fall within the spirit and scope of the invention and claims. The foregoing description of preferred embodiments of the present invention has been provided for the purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to the practitioner skilled in the art. The embodiments were chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the invention and its practical application, thereby enabling others skilled in the art to understand the invention for various embodiments and with various modifications that are suited to the particular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope of the invention be defined by the following claims and their equivalence.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application 60/720,860 entitled IMPROVED CONTENT MANAGEMENT, by Ryan McVeigh et al., filed Sep. 26, 2005 (Attorney Docket No. BEAS-01968US0), the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60720860 | Sep 2005 | US |
