Information for Each Content Item

Content managed by Oracle Content Server is primarily tracked by four tables: Revisions, Documents, DocMeta, and RevClasses. These tables track the content's metadata, state, and actions as well as information that is associated with each file.

Revisions

This table tracks core information of each revision of the content.

• One row per revision.
• Different revisions with same content share the same content ID and RevClass ID.
• System metadata for each revision:
  
  • Metadata for revisions: content ID, title, author, checkin date, and so on
  • Metadata for categorization and security: type, security group, doc account
• State information for various actions:
  
  • Indexing
  • Workflow
  • Document Conversion
• Numeric IDs and text labels to help track and retrieve a revision:
  
  • A unique dID per revision (the primary key in the table).
  • A unique dRevClassID per content.
  • A revision ID to mark the revision number for each revision.

Documents

This table tracks information for files that are associated with each content revision.

• One row per revision.
• Multiple rows per revision, one row for each of these files:
  
  • Primary
  • Alternate
  • WebViewable
• File information: original name, location, language, size, and so on

DocMeta

This table contains extended metadata fields.

• One row per revision.
• One column per metadata field.
• Definition for each field stored in the DocMetaDefinition table.

RevClasses

This table tracks information for each content revision.

• One row per content item.
• Row locked for content modification.
• A unique dDocName and RevClassId.
• Current indexed revision.
• Tracks date and user:
  
  • Creation date and creator
  • Last modified date and user
  • Owner

Webcenter Content User Table

Today when I logged in my Content Server, I was abashed by an error, stated below:

Unable to load the user information. Possible database connection failure encountered. Error message: (!csDbUnableToCreateResultSet,Quser(SELECT * FROM Users WHERE LOWER(dName) = LOWER('weblogic'))!$Closed Connection). java.sql.SQLRecoverableException: Closed Connection.

This error enlightened me with the User table which stores all the Content servers user details. This table is associated with 'User' Admin Applet in Content Server. It shows all data but password. Password is stored as Asterisk sign.

The cause of above error may be- DB is shutdown or the listener is not up and running. 

I checked my db and it was up so I bounced the server. The error went away. :)

SOLVED: Google chrome issue with Oracle WebCenter Content- Unresponsive, Kill pages, Hangs, Loading...

Google Chrome is very clever, fast and responsive browser. It has customer rich extensions and themes. It also provides vast developer investigation tool. All these features makes it excellent browser. 

Google Chrome has shown incredible performance but there is one pathetic issue which made many users sad. It is unresponsiveness of browser page in many situations, it ask for 'Wait' or 'Kill'. Many blogs and suggestions talk about it but there is not common fix for it. 

We faced this issue while working on SSXA application with Oracle WebCenter - Content as content server. Whenever we were launching contribution mode, we were facing the issue. On the other side, IE and Firefox were working fine. 

We worked hard and tried many fixes but nothing was working. One of our developer pointed out its style sheet which is causing the issue. We analyzed our css thoroughly but didn't get anything. Actually complete css was not working but if we divide the complete css in blocks then each block was working fine separately. It was bad time indeed. 

Later a week we identified the relative path that we have used for css was causing the issue. We replaced the relative path with absolute path. So we concluded that Google Chrome browser spend much time in parsing while we have relative urls.

For Quick reading for developer:
Please replace relative urls by absolute urls. 

dID Vs dDocName or Content ID

Below is the small concept although a very important one. Many beginners are confused with two important metadata fields. Here is the brief description. 

dDocName or Content ID is the unique identifier for a content revision set. 

dID is the unique identifier of each individual content revision within a set.

Being able to identify a content revision set is very useful, as it shows and tracks (makes auditable) the changes of content items over time.

Being able to identify each individual revision with dID is also very useful, so we can work with specific content revisions. This is one of the great advantages of the Content Server over other systems, which only store the changes between revisions. Full revision sets as well as individual revisions are managed objects and each one can be accessed by its own unique URL.

Cache Problem in WebCenter- Content (UCM) and SSXA

I was thinking to restart the series of blogs on Webcenter – Content (prior UCM, Stellent) from long. I will start with the basic problem that we face in content server i.e. Cache.  

The case study belongs to a Site studio External Application (SSXA) Project.

My team member was working on one assignment where she had to update some taxonomy values via Content Server. She had made all the changes but she didn’t get new values in application although new values were reflecting in DocMeta table. So she bounced the Content Server then she got the new values. She was happy!!

Here comes the situation, we can’t bounce the production server daily or weekly for this purpose. So we need to have some mechanism which can reflect our changes without bouncing Server. Here are some options:

1.    1. Content Server Cache:

This feature is very important. There might be a case when you see new data in table or view but it doesn’t reflect in Content Server forms like in dropdowns, list of values etc. In such cases, you try publishing schema explicitly. This populates new data changes in Content Server forms.

  

2. Site Studio External Application Cache:

When we work on Site Studio External Application (SSXA) then such problems come frequently. This problem is associated with above case, so you need to be sure that changed values are coming in Content Server first then you can proceed for Site Studio External Application. We can use Clear Entire Cache option for Site Studio External Applications. 

3. Site Studio External Application Cache via browser:

There is one more trick that you can apply if above both options didn’t work. Sometimes we send a request to Content Server to clear the cache and it responses with new values. We use refresh_cache parameter in this situation. You need to write complete application path and append ?refresh_cache=true at the end. This will load your page with some delay but it works well.

Example: http://gkquestions_application_rocks.us.com/index.html?refresh_cache=true

Oracle Public Cloud

Oracle is strengthening Public Cloud via RightNow

Oracle has aquired one more company which made 7 acquisitions in current year till now. Now people are not surprised with Oracle acquisitions. This time it has acquired "RightNow" – listed on NASDAQ – for $43 per share or roughly $1.5 billion net of RightNow’s cash and debt. With the acquisition, Oracle is adding a robust cloud-based customer service offering to its own Public Cloud solution.

RightNow is a software as a service company that focuses on customer service via call centers and self-service options via the Web and social networks. That customer service focus is aimed at the heart of Salesforce.com.

Its products are used by nearly 2,000 organizations across the globe, the company says.

Founded in 1997, RightNow went public in 2004. The company boasted a market cap of $1.2 billion at market close last week.

The acquisition by Oracle is expected to close later this year or in early 2012. As usual, the transaction is subject to a number of things, including RightNow stockholder approval, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of Oracle Development, said in a statement that Oracle is “moving aggressively to offer customers a full range of Cloud Solutions including sales force automation, human resources, talent management, social networking, databases and Java as part of the Oracle Public Cloud.”

That quote is basically shorthand for “Oracle is going cloud shopping.”

Oracle has closed 6 acquisitions this year. While its takeovers of RightNow and Endeca are pending, the company has completed the purchases of Datanomic, FatWire, Inquira, select intellectual property assets of Ndevr, Ksplice and Pillar Data Systems in 2011 alone.

To know more about Oracle Cloud Computing  click here

[hide] Mahesh [/hide]

Oracle WebCenter Suite

Oracle WebCenter Suite 

The heading of the blog might not be appealing as they are new names  of the product opted by oracle after important acquisitions.

In this fast moving world, if you don’t read technical blogs and web articles continuously then you would feel alone unless somebody explains you what had happened recently. In my case, I had worked on Oracle Portal two years back and I was well aware of the product. Recently, we had an enhancement to integrate our application with portal. I was stuck with something and tried to search on Google or Bing. I got my answer in OTN but I saw a new word i.e. ‘WebCenter Portal’ nearly in all search results. I had noticed but didn’t give time to explore it.

Second instance happened when Oracle acquired Stellent and FatWire. Stellent CMS product named ‘Universal Content System’ (UCM) was branded as ‘Oracle UCM’. by Oracle. We all were well aware of new branding as every forum and document had replaced Stellent UCM by Oracle UCM. Suddenly, Oracle acquired FatWire which lead to re-brand Oracle UCM as WebCenter sites. This made a confusion for users and developers. 

I was reading Oracle articles and recent announcements in Oracle Open World. I found very good information on WebCenter suite. Oracle should be considered a big time competitor to IBM and Microsoft in the Portal, Content Management and Social spaces. The out of the box integration features that Oracle provides across all of its product line, not just WebCenter is fantastic. 

Here is brief summary of products that Oracle has in WebCenter suite which cover ECM, WCM, Portal and Social. 

1. WebCenter Portal – A powerful combination of the best features from Oracle, BEA,  and Sun portals. This used to be called Web Center Spaces.

2.  WebCenter Sites – The FatWire Web Content Management system.

3.  WebCenter Content – The ECM product based on Stellent.

4.  WebCenter Connect – Also known as Web Center Social.

Oracle WebCenter suite = Oracle WebCenter Portal + Oracle WebCenter Sites + Oracle WebCenter Content + Oracle WebCenter Connect

Above diagram also shows the same.