The Alterian Content Manager's (ACM) application architecture combines an enterprise strength, reliable and scalable server with SQL Server or Oracle for the repository, Internet Exporer, Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome browsers with AJAX technology as well as Microsoft Smart Client desktop technology for client application usability and responsiveness, and a choice of ASP.NET or JSP to develop your web applications.
Content Application Engine (CAe)
The hub of the content management server is the repository and the CAe, which provides the programmatic interface used by both the delivery engine and the client applications.
This interface is exposed to the outside world through C#, Java and SOAP APIs for the application developer, the Smart Client and the MS Office connectors, and through ASP.NET web parts and JSP custom tags for the template developer.
Web Application Development
Platform technology choice has always generated heated debate. Should it be Java? Or should it be the Microsoft technology stack of the moment?
For content delivery templates, we leave you free to choose either Microsoft ASP.NET or JSP depending on your technology requirements.
We fully support both, in the native way you want to use those technologies – by providing the development building blocks you expect. For our Microsoft development community we don’t just offer our Java API with C# scribbled on it in crayon – instead we use master pages, we provide a data provider, custom controls and an example site. For the Java guys it’s the API and JSP Tags – or we support whatever development methodology you want to use.
Extensibility
Through the built-in Client Extender, the user interface of Alterian Content Manager can be further enriched. Using XML, you have full control over the main screen areas and the ribbon bars in ACM. As a result you can add any 3rd party or bespoke features that you'd like to expose to the content contributors, allowing them to do all their work from one and the same place.
Server side extensibility is available via both the Workflow Engine that executes server side tasks automatically, and the CAe that executes "jobs" according to a schedule defined in XML. Since they execute in the context of the CAe, these jobs have high-performance access to a local copy of the API. In addition, ACM supports a JMS adapter. This enables the developer to publish content workflow events (create, update, sign-off, soft delete and hard delete) to a message topic.
ACM Smart Client
We call our desktop client the “Smart” Client as it was built against the Smart Client standards that Microsoft defined in 2003. It was the first commercially available Content Management System that took advantage of the (at the time) emerging .Net platform standard.
ACM Web Client
With the Web Client, we felt that it was important not to mandate a single browser, or to somehow "degrade" the user experience when running on something other than Internet Explorer. For that reason, we worked hard to make the Web Client look and work identically in all major browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome, to open up the Web Client to as many client platforms as possible.
The Web Client is built on the powerful Dojo AJAX libraries and the Tapestry framework – requiring nothing more than a simple servlet container to run (we supply Tomcat on the CD as a suggestion).
Content Model
Content is defined by type, each type having a series of fields which can include a binary part, such as multimedia, and a set of relationships to other types. We can handle over a hundred and forty different binary types.
Types can be related to a specific workflow, which defines the stages that an item of that type passes through in the publishing process. Version and revision control is available at the level of individual content items, with a full audit trail. As part of workflow, you can specify how many previous versions to keep for each item of a specified type, and the points in the workflow at which new versions are made.
Access controls determine who has access to which items, at which stages in the workflow, and with which presentation. You can restrict where items of a particular type are located on a site and you can control workflow and access rights at a branch level.
Integration
The ACM interface is exposed to the user through several routes. The first of these is the client-side Java API, a set of public classes that provide the lowest level of access to the server facilities, bridged to a C# API for the Microsoft developer. Communication is over RMI/IIOP except in the case of classes that deal with binary objects which use HTTP streaming. The CAS is also exposed through a Web Services SOAP interface.
If you’d like to know more, please contact us .