The evolution of Web content management is not unlike the evolution of Web application servers and Web portal servers and Web anything else. The software was created to solve a single problem - the problem of managing content. But, when combined with the demands of the Web all your middleware capabilities quickly become critical, such as ensuring scalability, reliability, and security.

Web content management software was originally designed to make Web publishing easier, more dynamic, and more personalized. In fact, one of the pioneers and original market leaders was Vignette. When Vignette was formed in 1995 the founders acquired technology from CNET, the publishing house that had developed a sophisticated online publishing system for its high-tech news.

Other kinds of content management solutions also existed in the market such as Documentum, which came from a document management heritage. The various solutions have extended their functionality into each other's niches by acquiring, partnering, or building it. For example, the ability to do indexed search, database management, repositories, and workflow are appearing in more and more solutions in support of content-rich Web sites.

However it's not just about content. It's about architecture. With the demand for secure content-rich Web sites that scale, support B2B, and integrate, companies are looking to deploy a robust J2EE architecture that give them a level of infrastructure support. This is where IBM demonstrates a lot of strength - it can provide the added value on top of its Web content management solution, IBM Workplace Web Content Management (WebCM).

Remember, it's not just about content. It's also about portal integration. Why? The new desktop that we see now and going forward is a portal - an integration of an organization's assets in a unified and personalized view, using a single sign-on. So the topics go together. You don't want to aggregate your company's information in a portal except for your content and documents. On the contrary - it's essential to integrate your Web content in a portal so that the portal becomes the content's delivery vehicle. This is where IBM continues to demonstrate strength - it has the market-leading portal server integrated with its Web content management solution, WebCM.

This article is the first of a two-part series. The first part will discuss WebCM, its benefits, and how it integrates with IBM WebSphere Portal Server. The second part will detail the repeatable steps involved in migrating from Vignette to WebCM, and a redeployment strategy.

WebCM Overview
WebCM is relatively new. WebCM (or Aptrix, as it used to be called) originated on the Lotus Domino platform in the early days of Web content management and then migrated to the WebSphere platform making it more accessible and more likely to grow into a true enterprise solution.

Content management is becoming increasingly important for businesses competing in an on-demand environment. The ability to manage and deliver Web content efficiently and effectively is crucial for their success, and WebCM facilitates this from the initial authoring stage to the final presentation through its collaborative design, approval, caching, and staging features. The flexibility of WebCM allows both technical and non-technical people to easily create Web site content.

Another, and maybe the most important, benefit of WebCM is its integration with WebSphere Portal Server which lets it be integrated seamlessly with other IBM products, such as the IBM Portal Document Manager (PDM), so businesses can fulfill their strategic objectives.

WebCM's Features
WebCM's key features are listed below:

DYNAMIC PRESENTATION OF CONTENT
WebCM lets content be delivered dynamically, meaning that as Web content is created or modified it dynamically changes the Web site by using dynamic navigation through Navigator, Menu, and JSP components.

PERFORMANCE AND CACHING
WebCM provides different caching options and has a pre-rendering feature. The basic-to-advanced caching options store content in either memory and/or on the hard disk. The options can be used in conjunction with memory/hard disk caching to improve performance. Basic caching, which renders a page at a time, is a more flexible solution for a large Web site making its content more current because of expiration management. However, it can't cache dynamic, personalized, or secured content. Advanced caching, which can selectively cache content by session or users, provides the same output, but includes a 'connect' tag to selectively cache (or un-cache) components in a Web page. It's useful for a Web site whose content is largely static with some dynamic components.

WebCM's pre-rendering collates design and content components and stores them on a physical disk as complete HTML files. The pre-rendering engine renders an entire site (based on the site framework selected) and can't be broken down into partial pre-rendering. It's done by enabling the <Cacher class=….> module in the connect.cfg. The resulting HTML files can be stored on another device and used by other Web servers. Pre-rendering doesn't have expiration management and a pre-rendered site is replaced when the pre-rendering engine is triggered. It's suitable for small and mid-sized Web sites that contain static information with no personalization.

INTEGRATION OF CONTENT FROM DISPARATE SYSTEMS
WebCM can connect to systems such as DB2 and SQL Server and Web applications, and by using its just-in-time parsing of HTML and XML elements, it can integrate information from these sources as Web content.

PRESENTATION AND DELIVERY OF AGGREGATED CONTENT
Unlike other content management solutions, WebCM has decoupled its presentation layer from the content layer. By allowing for the creation of HTML templates, called Page Designs in WebCM, you can have different presentations of aggregated content and still enforce a consistent look-and-feel.

Since the presentation layer is separated from the content, it lets content creators create content that can be used in various sections of the site. While the same content can be associated with multiple sections of the site with WebCM, you can select different page designs for these sections and present the same content differently.

Another benefit of this separation of presentation and content is that you can use multiple delivery mechanisms. For example, content can have various page designs associated with it so that it can be viewed using WAP devices as well as Web browsers.

RAPID DEPLOYMENT (SYNDICATION)
WebCM can rapidly deploy changes across its staging environments through its syndication abilities. Syndication is the ability to push or pull content from various environments.

It does it by letting Syndicators and Subscribers be created in the various environments. Let's look at a simple example of a centralized two-stage environment architecture, as shown in Figure 1.

We would set up a Syndicator in the authoring environment so content can be pushed to the production environment. A subscriber would have to be set up in the production environment so the information from the authoring environment can be inserted in the database.

There are two ways to send data between two environments: All Items or All Live Items. All Live Items sends all items that don't have a workflow associated with them or items published in the workflow. All Items syndicates all items in the WebCM database whether or not they're in a workflow.

Choosing which to use to gather items for syndication depends on how you want to move the data between environments and the architecture you've deployed for the system. For example, in a simple two-stage centralized system that consists of an authoring environment and a production environment, you may only want to push live items in which case you would use All Live Items. However, in a three-stage environment that has authoring, staging, and production environments, you may want the items in the authoring and staging environments to share the same information so you would use authoring to syndicate All Items to staging.

The time it takes to syndicate data across environments depends on a number of variables like the number of items that have to be syndicated, the environment the system was configured in, and the network that the environments were set up in.

WORKFLOW
WebCM uses a workflow model that can manage content from draft to publishing. The complexity of the workflow can vary from a very simple two-stage draft/publish process to a more complex one where approval stages are introduced and e-mails are sent at various stages.

This ability to manage content through a workflow process is important for a content management system and lets the right stakeholders be involved in the approval process.

VERSION CONTROL
WebCM has versioning capabilities covering everything from design components and information architecture to content objects. It can version everything with its version-all functionality and restore everything through its restore-all functionality. It also provides a label that describes the version.

When versions are created, the system associates a timestamp with the items so that individual versions, which can be associated with a point in time by the label, can be rolled back to a specific time.

Because of WebCM's flexibility and configurability, the amount of versioning can be controlled through its configuration files, so if you only want content and the information architecture to be versionable it can be set up that way.

The system can also preview old content versions, the only drawback being that they would have to be previewed through the presentation layer of the current site.

WebCM and Portal Integration
With the launch of WebSphere Portal 5.1 and future dot releases, WebCM has moved from a standalone application in the WebSphere Application Server that could integrate into WebSphere Portal to being part of the Portal offering. This integration is strategic to IBM's plan for Lotus Workplace. WebCM is a key component for content delivery and by integrating it IBM can use its J2EE code base to grow and enhance its capabilities with the IBM Workplace platform. Several key changes resulting from this integration should be highlighted.

With WebCM part of the WebSphere Portal, the install process is simpler. Gone are the days when you had to install each component separately, copying files from directory to directory, and creating shared libraries to access the WebCM API. Now the whole process is done in one install, making it consistent with other IBM installers.

WebCM's user management has moved to WebSphere and the WebSphere Member Manager letting it take advantage of the security features that go along with the WebSphere platform. And by using the same security model, integration with other Portal applications is seamless. Once you've logged into the WebSphere Portal it knows who you are.

There's also better integration with Portal search. In the old versions of WebCM you could integrate with Portal Search but it was limited. Now Portal can index its searches from WebCM better and the Portal Search result sets can aggregate content from various sources.

Historically WebCM, even as an application in WebSphere Application Server, couldn't be clustered, so in a cluster environment, a separate instance of WebCM had to exist on each of the servers and syndication had to be used to send the same information to these instances. Now, with integration, clustering is possible.

As a standalone product on the WebSphere Application Server, WebCM used applets through a browser interface as its user interface but now it uses portlets, which has made it more customizable. Actually it's the first time developers have been able to customize the user interface.

Along with integrating with the Portal Server, WebCM's own functionality has been enhanced. With WebSphere Portal 5.1, WebCM now has an enhanced user interface, national language enhancements, managed reuse of Portal documents, and advanced content personalization:

• Enhanced user interface - WebCM is now deployed as a Portal Application, which consists of two portlets, an authoring portlet and a rendering portlet. The authoring portlet lets users create and mange their content. The rendering portlet lets them view and preview content. Through this new interface, specific items in WebCM can be searched for and the rich text editor has been dramatically improved so links and images can easily be put in the content without anyone knowing HTML.
• National language enhancements - WebCM now provides support for more languages offering better global deployment strategies for localized content. This enhancement also enables local content creators to create content in their local languages.
• Managed reuse of portal documents - Documents created in Portal can be reused in WebCM because of their integration and new WebCM components that explicitly allow reuse. Reused documents can be opened using Portal Document Manager (PDM).
• Advanced content personalization - Due to the integration, content can be personalized using the personalization rules built into WebSphere and new WebCM capabilities that personalize content spots in Web pages for delivery to targeted audiences based on the user profiles in the system.

The future for WebCM is looking exciting with the promise of an integrated development environment (IDE), repository syndication, and task-based workflows, all enabling WebCM to position itself for the next evolution of Web content management and help businesses around the world realize their potential using the IBM Portal and Workplace.