The Luwak CMS Presented by Communication & Collaboration Technologies, Division of the CIO, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute July 22, 2004 1 Who We Are John Kolb Gary Schwartz, director Web Group Mike Douglass Kevin Bishop Arlen Johnson Deb Wentorf Email Group Mike Sofka Brenden Conte Gail Kaiser Programmers Arthur Hyun Alan Powell 2 1
Philosophy & Motivations Enterprise approach: greatest good for the greatest number Incremental development: start small and add Build once - use many times Role separation: content, design, programming, maximize individual strengths and expertise Open source: no licensing fees, mutable, reasonable shelf-life Uniform OS & common build environment 3 Web Support: What We Offer Web server farm (Apache on Red Hat Linux) Application servers (JBoss) & Web Applications Shared file system (AFS) Daily backups (TSM) SSL encryption Authentication Server statistics System administration Programming services Design & architecture services 4 2
Web Support: What You Get Access to our services Technical support & expertise Our approach to web site & web application development 5 Web Project Relationships Board of Trustees Enrollment Management First-Year Experience Human Resources Institute Review Board Office of Communications Residence Life School of Engineering School of Architecture (VA) Student Health Center more 6 3
Web management at Rensselaer 7 Web Management Centralized Decentralized 8 4
Decentralization How do we avoid the pitfalls of a decentralized system? Duplication of effort, noise, out of date information How do we keep information authoritative? How do we exploit the strengths of a decentralized system? 9 Web Project Philosophy 1 Know Thyself -Socrates Concentrate on area of expertise Understand your web site s business objectives Keep it simple Be authoritative Link to other authoritative sites 10 5
Web Project Philosophy 2 Content is King Design and technology are secondary* Content defined by business objectives and expertise *so long as the site is available and usable 11 Pitfalls to Avoid Avoid noise / don t reinvent wheel It s the web! Plan well, release early, and improve incrementally, but Avoid (simultaneous) temptation for continuous improvement 12 6
C&CT s Approach Organizations concentrate on writing & editing We are facilitators Providing a flexible, role-based system Designing for the enterprise Syndicating content example Providing measurements of meaningful engagement activities (statistics) Future-proofing our projects for multiple devices, platforms, media, & formats 13 Technology Many ways to skin this cat Dynamic framework Wysiwyg tool CGIs & Perl ColdFusion ASP &.Net JSP & J2EE 14 7
What Is Luwak? Role-based content management system 15 What Is Luwak Manage information centrally through a web browser Deliver to any platform, device, or media in any XML or text format 16 8
Some History CONTENT X DESIGN 17 Some History CONTENT DESIGN XBUSINESS LOGIC pea (%sp,16) pea 0x4C00 move.l xc8.w,%a0 move.l %a0, %a2 jsr (%a2) rts 18 9
How do we separate content from presentation and presentation from business logic? We need a generalized markup language 19 XML 20 10
What Is Luwak? XML-based J2EE web application Separates content from presentation and presentation from business logic so that each can be developed independently content design business logic 21 Roles text & images APPS DB Code Images Templates XSLT CSS HTML 22 11
Advantages Developers can concentrate on individual strengths Separation of roles (technically, not just conceptually) allows each area to be modified independently Adapt more easily to multiple devices 23 Content Creator Roles writer editor editor-in-chief administrator more 24 12
25 Layout & Graphics 26 13
Ease of Use Depends on complexity of site, but Plain text XML (XHTML) Edit directly in interface or use existing GUI Xhtml Reference = 1 brief page 27 DB HTML XML PDF Images CSS XSL XSLNS4 XSL XSL DEFAULT PDA XML 28 14
Servlets: Filters Filter Example: The Kiosk browser request XSLT stylesheet Kiosk HTML XML response 29 Why? One source of content can produce: HTML RSS & Javascript feeds ical & vcal PDF files Tagged content for Adobe InDesign Raw XML Channels for a portal Output for multiple devices, platforms, media Roles: Content creators concentrate on content Designers concentrate on the interface Programmers concentrate on core functionality 30 15
Examples 31 Infrastructure Web Infrastructure Email Infrastructure 32 16
Web Infrastructure client redirectors web servers ldap afs other other web web 33 J2EE Infrastructure client redirectors j2ee servers databases 34 17
Current Email Infrastructure client local directors lists smtp webmail spam trap pop 35 New Email Infrastructure client local directors lists smtp webmail spam trap imap/pop 36 18