There was of course some excitement for Solaris, but really it’s pretty clear that Java was the buy:

Java is one of the computer industry’s best-known brands and most widely deployed technologies, and it is the most important software Oracle has ever acquired. Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle’s fastest growing business, is built on top of Sun’s Java language and software. Oracle can now ensure continued innovation and investment in Java technology for the benefit of customers and the Java community.

Oracle really isn’t just a database company any more.  They really haven’t been that for some time, but now they are a software company that also sells a database.  The fact is that they now own the language and ultimately the platform of which many of the best selling enterprise applications are built on.  That fact would actually be a little more interesting to think about if they had not already purchased  all of the best selling enterprise applications already.

Who’s Next

I really know nothing about who or what Oracle wants to acquire(in fact I don’t think I could know less), but how much sense does Red Hat make?  Red Hat is just about the gold standard in Linux distros(I don’t want to hear it Ubuntu fans, I’m talking servers), plus they get the last real application server out there that doesn’t have “sphere” in the name and they, like Sun, are major, major proponents of open source technologies.

It’s really crazy…Java.com will be an Oracle site….wow…double wow.

Our session is called “5 Rules to Optimize Your Website for SEO, ROI, and New Site Creation” and is scheduled for 2:30, Tuesday March 31 in room 113A.  You’ll have to attend to find out what the five rules are, but from a high level we’ll be delving in to some of the concepts that can make a large scale enterprise web content management implementation be successful.

If you’re looking for a preview.  Molly and I did a webinar with Oracle for their “Thriving through Expansion” series a few weeks ago.  It’s available for download here.  The password is Oracle1(I hope I’m not giving away a secret with that).

I’ll be at AIIM both Tuesday and Wednesday, so if anyone would like to meet up, please shoot me an email.  I’ll also probably start twittering again(something that only seems to happen at conferences).

Hope to see some of you there.

A little background

In Site Studio there are two types of pages;  Primary pages, which are essentially the landing pages for a folder(think home, search and listing pages).  They are almost always named index.htm and what’s unique about them is that when they are called they only refence specific content items.  Secondary pages, which could be viewed as everything else in a folder differ as they are used in more of traditional templated, delivery fashion, where the content is delivered through a reuseable template.  I butchering those descriptions a little for simplicities sack, but for the most part that’s how they work.

Out of the box, Site Studio lets you reference a content item using it’s content id in the url.  So if you had a content item called 000525, it would be referenced in a folder with it’s content id at the end(http://SiteStudio.com/site/folder/000525 for example).  Since all templates are mapped to thier folder, everything you need to render a page can be found in the URL…it’s all pretty simple.  The thing is, what if you aren’t too crazy about the 000525 name though?  It’s not really all that intuative of a name; you could make the content id friendly or you could use also take advantage of the SSUrlFieldName property in Site Studio.  The SSUrlFieldName property allows you to map a custom metadata field(perhaps one longer than the 30 characters you get for a content id?) as the file name idenifiier used when reference in a URL.

So content item 000525 can also have a metadata field tagged as “autofillthatfriendlyname.htm” and so when refereced as a url, it could look like this: http://SiteStudio.com/site/folder/autofillthatfriendlyname.htm.  That’s pretty cool, right?  There is a bit of a catch though, like the content id the value used in the friendly name field should be unique.  The only problem though is that there’s no automatic validation for the values, so there’s nothing to tell the contributor if they’ve duplicated a value.

What the component does

The code for this component is pretty simple, we’re hooking in to the validateCheckinData event and then basically updating whatever field is identified in the SSUrlFieldName property with a friendly name.  I like the validateCheckinData filter quite bit for situations like this where I need to update or add some metadata at check in or update time.  If I have to kick a process off or do something to a piece of content that has just been checked in, so after it’s in the system, I usually prefer the afterLoadRecordWebChange, but that’s probably for another post.

Getting back on track, once a piece of content is checked in which has a xWebsiteSection value(meaning it’s been assigned a default URL in a web site), it pulls the dDocTitle value out of the binder and makes it friendly(removes any spaces or special characters I could think of).  It then appends a file extension(set in the environmental config) and checks the value against the database.  If the friendly name has been used before on another content item it goes back and adds a 1 to the end of the title part of the file name(I know…not very imaginative).  Each time the component assembles a name it checks it against a max character count also found in the component’s enviornmental config.

Installing this puppy

The install on this component is not really unlike any other.  You of course do need to make sure Site Studio is installed on your content server and that the SSUrlFieldName property has been set in the config.cfg file.  I should note that when you set the SSUrlFieldName property, you need to leave the little x prefixing all custom metadata fields off.  So no xFieldName formats…just FieldName.  You probably will need to tell the component what the size of your friendly name field is.  It’s defaulted to 80 characters, so if you  plan on using less or more, you might want to update it in the component’s environmental config file.

You can download the component here:  Auto Fill Friendly Name

So what have you been working on?

The past couple months have been very fun technology-wise. I’ve actually recived a good amount of interest around the .NET API from a number of clients and even put together several Site Studio/ASP.NET demos. The integration of the two is a little tricky, but you can get the full editor functionality out on an ASP.NET form. This was all prior to the SS 10GR4 release as well, which from my initial tinkering provides quite a few new services around editing and preview(all of which are undocumented, so you have to look at the services file in the component for the list).

I’ve also been doing some work with ALUI…now known as WCI(Web Center Interaction).  ALUI is really my favorite of the Oracle portals(though that could be how often I’ve been running in to it as of late).  From what we’re hearing in Oracle circles UCM will provide content management to all of the WebCenter portals, but the feeling is that ALUI will provide the most functionality and seems to be the one all the demos are being run on.  Please note that I could be totally off on that assessment as Oracle tends to use the word “WebCenter” as a catchall phrase for every product, so it often gets confusing about what product you’re talking about.

It’s a bit of a hobbie but I’ve also been writing some ISAPI and Apache filters.  Most of my projects have been URL-rewriters, which is about the simplest thing you can do in a filter, but I really find them fun to code.  Unless you’re working with IIS7 writing a filter for either web server requires some C code, which is not a language I work in very often.  Really the only thing I do in C is code web security filters for UCM which is really all based on a sample project that takes all the trickery out of the task.  I’ll probably post a couple of my samples soon even though they’re not exactly content management related.  

Plans for ‘09

Despite the bad economy and there’s actually a lot to be excited about when it comes to content management and more specifically Oracle.  I’m not sure how R&D budgets are being affected by the downturn, but it’s pretty clear Oracle had quite a few items in the pipe before things started slowing down.  All of that said, here are some of things I’m hoping to write about this year.

1. Oracle’s recent release of Site Studio 10g4 will have some major benefits and changes to how we approach and when we can do when implementing a WCM project.  I’ve been working with some of it’s new features now for the past week or so and I’m already really, really impressed with what it can do.

2. The hodgepodge of Portals and applications all labeled “WebCenter”.  Most of my portal related posts have to do with capabilities and theory, but nothing all that tangible.  I’ll hopefully be release some samples soon.

3. CMIS.  I haven’t heard a lot about it lately, but it’s still out out there.  Last I checked there hasn’t been much of an update though Alfresco did release a connector for their CMS.

4. More .NET….There’s a lot of interest in anything UCM and .NET.

Ok that’s it.  Thanks to everyone who sent me a “where are you” email, hopefully there won’t be any more extended blogging breaks.

The Questions

Open WCM - Word on the street is that it’s close, very close actually.  In fact I think they may just be waiting for a release date.  When I arrived actually I heard it was not being demoed, but then shortly before leaving I found out it actually was on the demo grounds…doh!

ALUI - When I headed out to OpenWorld what I was hearing was that ALUi would be bundled with UCM.  That unfortunatly is not true.  There is however now a WebCenter suite, which when purchased, has licnesing for ALUI as well as a stripped down version of UCM.  The interesting thing though is that with the WebCenter suite you actually get your choice of portal; WebCenter, ALUI, WebLogic…doesn’t matter the suite gives you licensing for all of them. 

Though I like and have been mostly interested in ALUI, if there was one BEA product that Oracle seemed most interested in, it would have to be Ensamble.  Ensamble came up in just about every session I attended, in addition to the off the cuff discussions in the demo grounds and end of day activities.

My questions around WebCenter were really answered by the ALUI question.  WebCenter is still a portal, however now all the BEA portals(as well as some of the other products) can be licensed as part of the WebCenter suite.  Oracle has plans for all the portals, but strategically it’s WebCenter that they want to lead with long term.

Billy’s book - Got a copy…Got two actually as well as catching thier presentation, which was the best of the conference in my opinion.  I’ll be giving it a read and a review in the next few weeks so check back for that.

Conclusions

I really had a great time out at OpenWorld.  I had a great chance to meet many of you who I normally only talk to online as well as learn a thing or two about what those clever UCM folks are planning for the next year.

Ensamble - The session I did catch yesterday, “The art of the Mash”, was pretty interesting.  The presentation centered around the concept of enterprise mash-ups and specifically how they are implemented using Ensamble, the former BEA product I talked about yesterday.  The big thing I got out of the session was an overview of the security features in Enamble.  It’s pretty interesting actually, I would have assumed it ran in just a simple SSO model, where authenticatoin was handled by ensamble, which then passes the user’s id down to the app for authorisation.  Though it does support that, it also has a number of other trickes for dealing with application that have atypical set ups.

The Demo Of The Day

The name is a bit long but it makes a lot of sense when you dig in to the details.  What this is is the realization of something the UCM folks were talking about doing at last year’s OpenWorld, integrating Real Time Decisioning in to UCM to create targeting and personalization.

The demo, which basically selected an appropriate banner ad to display as we surfed a site studio web site, uses all information available to decide which ad to show.  For anonymous users that may be just their location based on IP, perhaps their browser or operating system.  For authenticated users that could also include data from their UCM profile, or if say Siebel is configured your entire profile and user history.

What’s also cool is that the configuration can learn on it’s own.  You don’t have to figure out whether your mac users are going to respond better to one piece of content than your PC ones.  Real Time Decisioning will figure that out for you, adapt to market changes and allow you to run tests to see how users respond.

Where it goes beyond being just a really powerful personalization engine though is when you factor in the “Multichannel” word in the title.  With this set up a user could theoretically log in to your web site, search for something on your web site and then perhaps call you.  If your call center is also using Real Time Decisioning(what it was originally designed for) the operator could automatically be alerted to what the caller was looking for, or even better yet, predict what the operator might want to give the caller when they get on the phone.  All of this would happen seamlessly and would adapt over time autonomously.

It’s sort like a big brother, only a really nice one that’s trying to help you out.

Aqualogic User Interaction

I twittered on this quite a bit during the session, but I had the opportunity to catch the strategy and vision for Web Center User Interaction.  The “User Interaction” part of the title is what interested me the most.  Whenever you see those two worlds(along with web center), you’re usually talking about the product formerly known as AquaLogic.

I am a pretty big AquaLogic fan.  First off many of my clients use User Interaction, which automatically makes me a bit partial.  Second though, I really like the architecture and what it’s designed to do.  ALUI has a number of features, but if I was to sum up basically what it “did” in nutshell is;  it allows you to tunnel other, non-portal, web applications as services.  Those services can then be surfaced as portlets in the container.  No java, no 168, no web parts…point it at your application and go.

The neat thing about that design though is that those portlets can be configured to render asyncronously, basically using AJAX.  Fundamentally once you have that ability the portal container becomes unessecary, you can remote-script your portlets(really non-portal web applications) on to just about any web page.  That’s the principle behind the ALUI ensamble product, which was known as an “Enterprise Mashup” application. 

Oracle appears to have big plans for Ensamble and is planning on using is as what they called a “UI Service Bus” with Web Center.  Basically allowing them to drag and drop various web applications, tunneled through ALUI or Web Center services on to thier Web Center pages or really any web application.  In fact in the demo they dropped an application on to an IPhone.

Middleware Lounge. Where the party is. Look at these rocking folks.

Morning Keynotes

I’ve been somewhat casually listening to the keynotes this morning.  Some of the highlights though:

Michael Phelps spoke.  Hey gave his daily routine, which more or less was eating, sleeping and swimming(though I think his swimming routine probably lacks the underwater handstands and cannonballs mine would include).  Interesting note, he said that the OpenWorld crowd was the most amount of people he had been in front of at one time so far.

BeeHive Announced and Demoed - BeeHive was actually demoed last year, but I guess this is it’s official launch.  Most of the demos on BeeHive look pretty nice and all, though it’s tough to dig deep on a new software solution during the 5-45 min presentations.  I say that because I was talking with some Oracle developers yesterday who were very casually talking about how they’ve been using BeeHive internally and think it’s great.

Oracle and Amazon - Oracle announced integration with the Amazon Web Services.  I wish I caught this in more detail, but it definitely sounds like they will have the ability to virtualize the Oracle database on Amazon cloud compute and potentially store information on Amazon S3.  I’ll post more details on this as I get them.

Sessions

I’m having some trouble getting in to the session builder site right now and unfortunately can’t remember the exact ones I signed up for.  I’ll put and update out when I get at them, but for now I’ll be heading over to a WebCenter session at 11.  Check back for sessions updates later.

Billy and Raimonds

Oracle has given me a ridiculously large blogger badge to carry around with me this week.  I think it’s so presenters and other people know a member of the media(hehe) is around when they’re speaking.  I have to admit that it makes me a bit self-concious, but actually we’ve used it to get our current seats spack dab in the center of the “blogger” section.

My enormous blogger badge

That’s great you have nice seats, but what about the keynote?

The theme of OpenWorld this year, or at least one of the themes, is going green.  So far we’ve heard from the mayor of San Francisico, Gavin Newsome as well as Ed Begley Jr.  They talked about some of the environmental accomplishments San Francisco as well as some of the challenges we have throughout the world.  Sort of a serious theme, but good speaches nevertheless.

Mary Matalin Rocks the House

Right now we are hearing from Mary Matalin and I assume we will hear from her husband James Carville who is sitting nearby shortly.  She started off pretty well, lots of clever funny stuff about how she is different than her husband, but sounds like she’s on an MSNBC panel right now.

Carville is AWESOME

James Carville

James Carville is speaking now and no offense to Mary Matalin, but a much, much better speaker.  He’s a very funny and animated fellow.  Carville’s primary theme is a sort of amazement of how fast things are happening and changing in the US right now.

Very funny line…”The central point of this campaign is: What are these candidates doing at 3 o’clock in the morning?”

Carville is done…Question and answer time.  I have to say I felt that both speeches left me feeling a little on the depressed side.  It appears our country may have some problems.

Good question on what they think about the Comedy Central satire shows like John Stewart and Steven Cobert.  Apparently James Carville is a fan of TheOnion.com.

So I have to admit that the cute, funny banter between Mary and James isn’t all that funny any more.  I feel like I am at dinner with the couple that can’t stop arguing.

Ok they’re done.  We’re off to the blogger’s party at The Thirsty Bear.