FAQs and Online Help

SR2's flexible database structure allows you to do this in a number of ways, but the easiest and most typical way would be to create a new Content Domain for the department. In this way, all the department's content, users, workflows, and roles would be separate from those pertaining to other departments.

To clone a section of a site, you can:

• Make a copy of the section's Content Domain, then edit the copy's content appropriately.
• Set up the users, roles, and workflows appropriate to the new section, then make copies of the content you want to be consistent between sections.

Users can then edit the content one page at a time, moving each page through the section-specific workflow as they finish customizing them.

SR2 neither provides nor requires special template-development tools because it supports any Web-based programming language. This means that developers can use the tools they have, know, and trust. No special training is required. And once a template has been developed and tested in the developer's IDE, it is a simple matter for a developer or administrator with the appropriate permissions to make that template known to SR2.

Given this methodology, simultaneous use and development of templates is very easy.

SR2 uses different AssetTypes to define the fields and metadata applicable to pages containing similar content. As such, each AssetType determines the fields that content authors use both to describe the content and to enter it. Because a AssetType is an entry (but not display) template, SR2 allows multiple AssetTypes to write to the same database table. As a result, for example, different roles might see more, fewer, or different fields that pertain to a given piece of content.

SR2's implementation of customizable AssetTypes is unique among Content Management systems because it provides user access to both metadata and content. This allows many customers to realize efficiency gains, as it allows them to create hundreds of pieces of content per input template, then use that content with any number of output templates.

Through SR2's implementation of permission-based access at the user and role level, you can easily partition users or groups so that they are only aware of appropriate content. Alternatively, you can set up a separate Content Domain for each department.

Note that a SR2 Content Domain is not a "content silo." Any page template can retrieve content from any Content Domain - or multiple Content Domains. At the same time, however, SR2's security features ensure that content authors are limited to viewing and modifying content only in the Content Domains for which they have authorized access.

In addition to its content authoring capabilities, SR2 provides the ability to define relationships between assets. By doing so, it effectively enables you to define the structure and hierarchy of Interfacing Technologies site. In addition, by storing relationship information in the database, it allows site developers to programmatically access that information and use it when retrieving and displaying page content.

In SR2 any asset may have multiple parents, providing the ability to reuse content by making the same asset available from more than one area of a Web site.

For example, you could create a "Contact Us" page whose parents are your Home page, your corporate address/directions page, and others.

Yes, SR2 supports the use of metadata tagging on all assets. Administrators also have the ability to create custom metadata tags. Tag values are searched during full text searches.

Developers can create custom templates, which check the content metadata to act as a qualifier to determine if the content should be displayed. (Such as displaying press releases for the past 30 days.)

SR2 supports the use of syndicated content using RSS news feeds. Refresh Software offer developers training which shows how developers can implement this feature.

SR2 allows you to define and implement the workflows that meet your content-development requirements, ensuring that those processes remain familiar and efficient. And, because SR2 is browser-based, you can easily incorporate third-party contributors into your workflows; for example, one of your partners could update their contact information on your intranet.

In SR2, a Role is the name given to a type of user who performs certain actions. For example, the Writer role would describe those users who create and maintain pages of content. It's not a job description, but, rather, a functional description within the context of your content-development process. Administrators create roles and determine which commands are available to each role.

Each SR2 user is assigned (by a System Administrator) to at least one Role, depending on the actions that they are expected to perform during the process. For example, the user “peter.h” might act as both a content author and an editor for other authors. Therefore, he would be assigned to both the Writer and Editor roles.

Accordingly, privileges within SR2 are based on the user's current role. For example, Writers might be able to create new assets, save them, import images, etc., but not be able to publish assets to the Web site or create new user descriptions. On the other hand, an Administrator might be able to create users and roles, but not assets.

Yes. If you want, as part of its implementation of Workflows, SR2 can automatically send an email to the person or persons who have the role of publisher indicating that content is awaiting approval.

Yes. Many search engines (including Google and Altavista) can search dynamic content.

Yes. Because all content stored in a SR2 Content Domain is XHTML, site visitors can use any browser on any platform to view it.

SR2 is a modern Content Management System that offers enterprise functionality, database-driven storage, and an open publishing model.

SR2 employs a number of open standards, including HTTP, published database schema and ANSI standard SQL.

SR2 uses a unique architecture that focuses on supporting the content contributors matched with an open publishing model. This “Core Content Management” approach decouples the authoring and publishing activities, using an enterprise class database as the point of integration.

Templates to be integrated with SR2 can be written in any language that supports database connectivity and regular expressions, including the following scripting languages: ASP, PHP, JSP, CFML or any programming language that supports SQL, connectivity to the RDBMS, and supports regular expressions.

A SR2 Content Domain stores pure content, which is completely independent of display logic or delivery channel. Content may be structured or unstructured.

For example, a page used to display a press release might include the unique information Content (the body of the release) and Release Date (the date on which the information in the release should become public). On the other hand, a page used to display a job listing might include such unique information as Department, Description, Responsibilities, Requirements, Contact Name, etc.

Fields like Release Date and Department contain semantic data that may subsequently be used in the display logic decision process. Other fields, like Content and Description contain rich, unstructured text and formatting commands. Thus, a Content Domain supports both structured data and unstructured text, unlike other products that support one or the other, but not both. The availability of this semantically tagged information allows template authors great flexibility in creating various specialized displays, while simultaneously relieving content authors of the burden of layout and format decisions.

SR2 offically supports:

• Oracle 8i, 9i
• Microsoft SQL server 2000 and 2003

Since SR2 stores all of the structured and unstructured content, meta-data, and program state information in an Enterprise worthy RDBMS (Oracle, SQL Server, etc.) content can be retrieved, data feeds fed in, and program data updated using standard database and SQL tools.

This flexibility allows SR2 to work with many other systems in an enterprise. The level of possible integration depends on the needs of the organization.

For additional information, please see the help site for code samples and more information about integration with other software applications.

With SR2, a Web page is assembled from a number of assets. The granularity of rollbacks is specified when the administrator defines the types of assets to be stored. For example, headers and footers are usually defined as different asset types, allowing them to be rolled back individually.

SR2’s Content Domain maintains a variety of information about every asset it stores, including the entire history of every change made to the asset. Every time you save an asset, SR2 updates its content and increments its version number. SR2 also provides you with the ability to:

• Compare two versions of an asset
• Restore a previous version

Thus, you can roll back to a previous version of any asset.

For convenience, SR2 extends this functionality with the concept of Editions, which capture the entire state of a published site as a named entity.

SR2 supports multi-channel publishing by its open publishing model.

Companies can implement different templates to display the same content in dramatically different ways or to format the content for different distribution channels.

This is implemented by having the publishing template retrieve the content and publish it on multiple channels simultaneously.

SR2 has been tested on:

• Windows NT 4.0, SP6a or above
• Windows 2000,
• Solaris 2.6, 7, 8
• Red Hat 6.2 or later

Templates for use with the database can be written in any language that supports database connectivity and regular expressions, including the following scripting languages:

• .Net
• Java Server Pages (JSP)
• ColdFusion (CFML)
• Active Server Pages (ASP)
• Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)
• Tool Command Language (TCL)
• Python
• Perl

Many content management systems require a strict correspondence between data input templates, display templates, and Web pages. SR2 decouples these notions with its open publishing model. Thus, SR2 imposes no constraints on how you code display templates; it is simply the repository of the content that will appear on the pages based on the templates.

Content contributors are unaffected by the template that is being used or any changes to the templates or publishing model.

Yes, you may. In fact, we encourage it through our implementation of flexible, customizable AssetTypes. Each AssetType defines metadata that you want to store with the content for each page based on that AssetType. Fields for this metadata can then appear on the input template that SR2 displays for each page. In this way, you can define and easily maintain content-related data.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, an application is “… a computer program designed for a specific task or use.”

Example of four Web applications

• Main company Web site (e.g. http://www.mycompany.com)
• Intranet (e.g. http://intranet.mycompany.com)
• Sales Portal ( e.g. http://salesteam.mycompany.com)
• Micro-site (e.g. http://www.ournewproduct.com)

As demonstrated above, commonly an application corresponds to a sub-domain + domain (URL) which nicely maps to a SR2 Content Domain. So, the list above represents four applications.

It is not uncommon for SR2 to be implemented in a way such that a single application uses more than one URL and more than one Content Domain. Refresh Software has many customers that use several Content Domains per application.

Example of single Web application that includes multiple URLs: a Careers Web site for three countries may be: One (1) Application – “Careers”.

Absolutely. You simply need to make sure that images and files are uploaded to a shared directory that is "virtualized" to each server in the cluster.

Alternatively, you can enable SR2 to store images and files as BLOBs in the database. Images and files are then available to any server that has database connectivity.

Not at all. SR2 does not take over your site - it interoperates with it as a component.

You can be easily add SR2 to an existing site and set it up to manage only specific content. You can then move other content that may not change as frequently to SR2 as you need it.