Julian So writes:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > I hunted all round Vignette's site trying to handle on what it does,
> > but am still not really any the wiser.
>
> Content management, basically.
Problem is, this doesn't really tell you much. Okay, sure it
says that the focus is not on the web server nor on HTML layout, but
what *is* it on?
> Vignette was spun out of CNet a couple of years ago. Before that
> happened, Vignette (which wasn't even called that then) was their
> proprietary, in-house content management system.
According to various articles and press releases I've come across
in my search for hard data, Vignette was started by two guys who
decided to start an Internet company and then called around to all the
big companies asking "what do you want?" When they got to Cnet, Cnet
said "well gee, we have this in-house system we call PRISM that we use
to produce our web site, we could cut a deal where we let you turn it
into a product for a percentage of your company."
I'm still getting a grip on StoryServer, so caveat all of the
following and don't be surprised if it's sketchy. If I seem critical
or misinformed, please inform me! Preliminary skimming and some
reading indicates some of the following:
StoryServer sits between the web server and a database (neither of
which are included - I consider this a good thing, btw, since it lets
you use the server and rdbms of your preference).
Part of StoryServer is a TCL-based embedded command system,
similar to server-side includes but more powerful (maybe like PHP or
embedded Perl).
Another part is a sort of make-like system they call caching, where
you can designate a page as one to be parsed and created and then kept on
disk (and presumably served directly by the web server).
Another part is a desktop GUI "production center" which provides
some development tools - haven't worked with this yet, but people who
have spoke ill of the early versions (2.x - currently the latest
version is 4.2).
There's marketing fluff all over about StoryServer providing
workflow stuff, but I don't know if any of it is built into the
Production Center. Most of the technical discussions of workflow
pretty much imply you have to build all of the end-user
content-editing stuff yourself, using HTML forms and the embedded TCL.
The same issues may hold true for the various marketing fluff
referring to StoryServer as a document manager.
One thing I'm really worried about is that the above-mentioned
content-editing stuff (referred to as Content Templates) are pushed to
the DB by the Production Center. This may imply that they *must* be
developed under the Production Center's editor, which I really would
rather not do (EMACS being my lisp-interpreter-thinly-disguised-as-
-an-editor of choice).
Likewise, I'm really worried that some of the StoryServer table
structures may get in the way of using native Oracle tools like
SQL*Loader to pump very large (60,000 row) tables into the db. Maybe
it won't, but I haven't been able to find any hard data at all about
the table structures that StoryServer requires, so I can't say for
certain either way. If we have to enter each one row through the
content editing forms, I'll scream. (Well, and then I'll write a Perl
script to automatically post each row to the content-editing-form URL,
but still).
Steven J. Owens
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The NEW Web Consultants Association FORUMS and CHAT:
Register Today at: http://just4u.com/forums/
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
Give the Gift of Life This Year...
Just4U Stop Smoking Support forum - helping smokers for
over three years-tell a friend: http://just4u.com/forums/
To get 500 Banner Ads for FREE
go to http://www.linkbuddies.com/start.go?id=111261
---------------------------------------------------------------------
