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:
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).
Fill in the values for the Docbase Settings section as follows (refer to figure 21.3):
Test_WebCabinet
web cabinet. All content created under this Web Cabinet directly or within folders contained under this Web Cabinet will be published. 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:
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.Click on the NEXT button and go to the Advanced tab.
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>
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 documentstest_publish_dev_doc_r:
Stores the exported repeating-valued attributes of documentstest_publish_dev_doc_l:
Stores the relations (dm_relation
objects) of published documentstest_publish_dev_doc_m:
Stores information about the state of published documentsThe 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.
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.
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.
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 |
|
|
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
%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.
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.
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