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21.3 Steps for Setting Up a Site Publishing Configuration

The entry point to a publishing operation is a Site Publishing Configuration, which can easily be created using Documentum Administrator. Follow the steps mentioned next to create a new Site Publishing Configuration as per your specific needs:

Log in to Documentum Administrator as an administrator and go to Administration | Site Publishing. Choosing FILE | NEW | SITE PUBLISHING CONFIGURATION brings up the empty Site Publishing Configuration screen as shown in figure 21.1:
Figure 21.1: Blank Site Publishing Configuration screen
By default, the Site Publishing Configuration is created in an Active state (as shown in figure 21.1). You can deactivate the configuration by choosing the Inactive radio button.
Documentum internally manages Site Publishing Configuration as two objects in the Docbase—dm_webc_config and dm_webc_target. The attribute target_id in the dm_webc_config object stores the object ID of the dm_webc_target object and this is how the two are linked.
When you create a Site Publishing Configuration using Documentum Administrator, the dm_webc_config and dm_webc_target objects are implicitly created and managed for you (refer to figure 21.2).
Figure 21.2: Site Publishing Configuration implicit objects
Note
You can create any number of Site Publishing Configurations for a given Docbase and publish to many websites from the same source Docbase.
To create a Site Publishing Configuration, you need to fill in the values under the Info and Advanced tabs. Let us take a look at the Info tab to begin with.
Fill in the values for the Docbase Settings section as follows (refer to figure 21.3):
- Configuration Name: A valid name for the Site Publishing Configuration.
- Publishing Folder: Choose the Web Cabinet (by clicking on Select Source Folder) from which the content needs to be published. In our Docbase, we created the Test_WebCabinet web cabinet. All content created under this Web Cabinet directly or within folders contained under this Web Cabinet will be published.
- Version: The lifecycle state of the documents at which the publishing should happen. This corresponds to the r_version_label attribute of content.
  In our case, we are publishing all documents that are in the Staging state of their lifecycle. If you do not specify a specific version label, the CURRENT version of content is published by default.
  Fill in the values for Target Host Settings section as follows:
- Target Host Name: Host name or the IP address of the website host (where SCS Target has been installed).
- Target Port: The port number on which SCS Target service listens. The default is 2788.
- Connection Type: Connection to SCS Target. This can be raw (Non-secure) or SSL (Secure)
- Target Root Directory: This is the webroot on the website host where published files will be placed. If the designated file structure does not exist on the host, Documentum creates it while publishing.
Figure 21.3: Info tab settings in Site Publishing Configuration
Click on the NEXT button and go to the Advanced tab.
If you need the document's attributes/properties to be added as HTML metatags, select the checkbox Add properties as HTML Meta Tags (refer to figure 21.4).
Under such a scenario, published HTML documents contain metatags for the exported attributes under the HTML <HEAD> tag as follows. Note that these metatags are read and indexed by search engine crawlers (such as: Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc.) for web searches.
```
<head>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<META name="r_object_type" content="dm_document">
<META name="keywords" content="product, specifications, medium, tool">
</head>
```
Note that keywords being a repeating attribute has multiple values separated by commas (,).
To insert metatags for other published files with non-HTML formats, add the following key in the webcache.ini file:
```
additional_metatag_extensions=jsp, <any other format>
```
The webcache.ini file is typically found under the following location on the SCS Source, in the case of Windows server:
```
%DOCUMENTUM%dbaconfig<Docbase name>
For example: C:Documentumdbaconfig<Docbase name>
```
Figure 21.4: Property export settings in Site Publishing Configuration
In order to export/publish the attributes/properties of the documents to the target host, select the Export Properties checkbox.
Documentum SCS exports all the document attributes in the form of a properties.xml file to the target host. SCS Target reads and inserts these values into the specified database tables.
You can select the checkbox Include contentless properties in order to publish objects that do not have any content file associated with them.
Additionally, by choosing the checkbox Include folder properties, you can publish the attributes of folders containing documents as well.
In the Property Table Name field, specify the name of the database table to which the document properties should be published. We have provided a table name test_publish_dev_doc in our Site Publishing Configuration.
The following four tables are created by Documentum when documents are published on the target server's database:
- test_publish_dev_doc_s: Stores the exported single-valued attributes of documents
- test_publish_dev_doc_r: Stores the exported repeating-valued attributes of documents
- test_publish_dev_doc_l: Stores the relations (dm_relation objects) of published documents
- test_publish_dev_doc_m: Stores information about the state of published documents
Note
The relation objects (dm_relation object type) can be published by setting the following key in the webcache.ini file:
export_relations=TRUE
By default Documentum exports certain attributes of documents, such as r_object_id, object_name, i_chronicle_id, etc. Additional attributes can be exported by clicking the Select Attributes link as shown in figure 21.4.
Figure 21.5: Adding SysObject attributes
By default the attributes of the dm_sysobject object type are displayed (refer to figure 21.5). You can select the attributes of dm_sysobject that you want published to the target host. Select the checkboxes against the attribute names and click the Add> button.
In order to include the attributes of custom object types, choose the object type from the Object Type dropdown. This automatically displays the custom (non-inherited) attributes of the selected object type (refer to figure 21.6). As usual, you can choose the checkboxes against the relevant attribute names and click the Add> button.
Figure 21.6: Adding attributes of custom object types
If the SCS Target database is SQL Server, a very common error message seen during publishing is:
```
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Cannot create a row of size 8140 which
is greater than the allowable maximum of 8060.
```
This is a restriction imposed by SQL Server database, which does not allow more than 8060 bytes per row in a table. To overcome this restriction, add the following key under the WEBC_COMMON section of the webcache.ini file:
```
[WEBC_COMMON]
mssql_store_varchar=TRUE
```
One should be very judicious while adding the publishable attributes while creating the Site Publishing Configuration (in case you have SQL Server as the target database). The greater the size (total length) of all published attributes, the greater are the chances of a publishing error due to the SQL Server row-size limitation.
Now you need to fill out the data for the Content Selection Settings section (refer to figure 21.8).
A document in Documentum Docbase can exist in numerous formats. For example, a simple xyz.xml file can be styled via XSL to generate multiple renditions such as xyz.html, xyz.wml, xyz.shtml, etc.
In your Site Publishing Configuration, you can specify whether you need to publish just the parent format (xyz.xml) or its renditions as well. If you need to publish multiple renditions of the same file, click on the Select Formats link and choose the additional formats that you want published.
Note that in Documentum, formats exist in the form of dm_format objects. You could run the following DQL query (via the IDQL command-line utility or through Documentum Administrator) in order to look at the various formats within Documentum:
```
DQL > select name,description,dos_extension from dm_format
```
Figure 21.7 lists a few formats in Documentum along with the actual DOS extensions in file names.

Format name

DOS extension

ppt8

ppt

ppt8_slide

ppt

excel8book

xls

mp3

mp3

zip

zip

msw8

doc

rtf

rtf

pdf

pdf

jpeg

jpg

gif

gif

bmp

bmp

html

htm

swf

swf

crtext

txt

mpeg

mpg

Please keep in mind that clicking on the Select Formats link displays the existing format names and not the actual DOS extensions.
21.8: Content Selection Settings section
Add the formats in the same way you would have added attributes in the Property Export Settings section (refer to figure 21.9). You can even add the custom format custom_format that we created in Chapter 15.
Figure 21.9: Selecting existing formats to be published
Effective Labels assigned in Site Publishing Configuration determine publishing of documents depending upon their effective and expiration dates.
Each document has a_effective_date, a_expiration_date, and a_effective_label attributes by virtue of being a subtype of the dm_sysobject object type.
All the above three attributes are repeating attributes and hence during content creation, users can specify multiple effective and expiration dates for documents corresponding to different effective labels. Based on the specified effective label, the Site Publishing Configuration can publish or expire content based on its specific effective and expiration dates respectively.
For example, content could have the following effective labels and effective expiration dates:
Effective Date: 20/10/2005
Expiration Date: 25/10/2005
Effective Label: UNDER REVIEW
Effective Date: 10/12/2005
Expiration Date: 30/12/2005
Effective Label: FINAL
Appropriately setting up the Site Publishing Configuration could publish the content on 20/10/2005 and withdraw it from the website (expire it) on 25/10/2005 for the UNDER REVIEW effective label of content.
Also, the content with the FINAL effective label would be published on 10/12/2005 and withdrawn from the website on 30/12/2005.
Refer to figure 21.10 for filling out the Miscellaneous Settings section in Site Publishing Configuration:
During publishing, Documentum exports the publishable documents along with their attributes to an export directory on the Content Server machine in the form of content files and a properties.xml file, which contains attribute information).This is called an export data set and you need to specify the path where export data should be placed. The default location is shown in the screen, but you can change it by clicking the Select Directory link.
Clicking on the Select Directory link shows the existing file/directory structure on the Content Server file system.
Figure 21.10: Miscellaneous Settings section
You can specify a Trace Level to track the SCS publishing operation traces. These trace levels are used in Trace API methods.
We will discuss the Web Server URL Prefix during our discussion of WebView in Chapter 22.
Online Synchronization Directory (refer to figure 21.11): Online Synchronization is an important and helpful feature in websites that have bulk publishes happening at periodic intervals, instead of single item publishes.
For a running site, bulk publishes can cause broken sections/links in the site. Using Online Synchronization, you need to specify an Online Synchronization directory on the target host.
The SCS export data set (i.e. published content files + properties) are first placed in the Online Synchronization directory on the target host and then switched to the target root directory (webroot). Actually the webroot directory and Online Synchronization directories are renamed for the synchronization to take place. This causes minimal impact to the running website and reduces inconsistencies to a great extent.
Figure 21.11: Synchronization Settings section
Using the Pre/Post-Synch Script on Target option, you can write custom scripts to perform some tasks specific to your business needs, before or after publishing has updated the website.
The Pre-Synch and Post-Synch scripts execute before and after SCS updates the website respectively.
The execution order (when Online Synchronization is used) is as follows, from left to right: Pre-Synch Script —> Online Synchronization —> Post-Synch Script.
The scripts can be referenced at two locations:
- Site Publishing Configuration: Place the script physically on SCS Target host at the following location: %WEBCACHE%productin
  Example: C:DocumentumSCSproductin
  Or:
- agent.ini file on SCS Target host as pre_sync_script or post_sync_script keys:
  Place the script physically on the SCS Target host at the following location: %WEBCACHE%productin
Note that agent.ini is found on the SCS Target host at the following location on Windows servers: %WEBCACHE%adminconfig<SCS Target port number>
Example: C:DocumentumSCSadminconfig2788
It is worth mentioning that Documentum allows you to pass arguments to scripts as well. For a more detailed understanding, please go through the Documentum Site Caching Services User manual.
In our example, we have specified test_pub_script.bat as a Post-Synch script in Site Publishing Configuration.
Content of test_pub_script.bat:
```
REM dummy script
echo "Publish done" > C:Publish_Operationpub_status.txt
pause
```
After the publishing operation completes, the Publish done message is seen in the file C:Publish_Operationpub_status.txt on the SCS Target host.
Finally, you need to fill in the Transfer Authentication Settings section before completing the details of Site Publishing Configuration (refer to figure 21.12).
- Enable system authentication on target: Selecting this checkbox requires providing a valid user name and password on the target host for authentication purposes. The data transfer from SCS Source to the SCS target server happens only after user credentials have been authenticated.
- Under the User Name field, provide a valid user name/account that will be used by the SCS transfer agent to make a connection to the target server.
Figure 21.12: Transfer Authentication Settings
After providing all the required Site Publishing Configuration details, click on FINISH to save the newly created Site Publishing Configuration in the Docbase.
The existing Site Publishing Configurations show up under the Administration | Site Publishing section in Documentum Administrator, as can be seen in figure 21.13.
21.13: Newly created Site Publishing Configuration