Repository Services

Table of Contents

Overview

Introduction to Repository Services

Available Services

Access Statistics

Application Properties

Collaboration

Service ACL

State Management Service

Subscription Service

Time-Based Publishing


Overview

This documentation:

Introduction to Repository Services

Repository services are applications that offer useful functionality for applications and Knowledge Management components. They are called repository services because they are directly assigned to a repository manager in the configuration. They provide additional capabilities (so-called unified aspects) to handle the resources exposed by the repository manager of that specific repository.

The repository framework instantiates an instance of a particular repository service for each configuration of that service which exists. This means that different configurations of the same service are instantiated separately and co-exist. For example, if a repository uses a special implementation of a repository service that originates from a different vendor, then a specifically configured instance of that service has to be assigned to the repository in question and be instantiated.

The repository framework, in coordination with the repository managers, enables the addition of repository services to the platform. The repository framework provides the foundation for extending the KM Platform to include services. The services themselves are extensions of the platform and as such are not actually part of the framework.

Note that application properties and service ACLs are delivered together with the framework, although they are technically repository services.

Available Services

The following sections describe the available repository services in alphabetical order:

Access Statistics

The access statistics service enables you to find out when a resource was last read by a specific user. It stores the date when the resource was read for each user that accesses the resource.

The service is particularly useful for an application that needs to know whether a new version of a resource has been read by a specific user. When the resource is changed, the last-read date is removed and is only reset for the user in question when he or she accesses the resource. Therefore, if no last read-date is available, the application can recognize that this particular user has not yet viewed the new version of the resource.

Application Properties

The application property service enables applications to store information related to resources as properties on the database. The application properties are different to system or custom properties. They simply represent a container for any type of information which is related to a resource and is written to the tables of the database.

Further Information

See the Javadoc package description com.sapportals.wcm.repository.service.appproperties for:

Collaboration

When you work with documents it is often necessary to exchange information about them and to cooperate with other people. The collaboration services of Knowledge Management provide functions that make it easier for you to cooperate with other people on tasks related to documents. They enable you to enter information that is relevant for documents and to automatically share it with other users.
The currently available collaboration services are:

Further Information

Service ACL

The service ACL service administers service ACLs.

Service ACLs enable repository services to assign service-specific permissions to users, groups, or roles. Service ACLs work just like standard Framework ACLs (read, write, delete, and so on), and are maintained in the same way as standard ACLs, but the supported permissions are specific to particular services.

State Management Service

This service enables documents to be processed according to their current status, for example, in approval workflows.

Subscription Service

The subscription service enables users to keep track of changes that are made to resources in a repository. Users can create a subscription on a resource and specify that they want to be informed whenever the resource changes. Subscriptions can have many different forms. They can be created for various resource types and different recipients. They can return information about resources via different channels and at individually configured intervals.
For information on how to use the subscription service interface with code extracts see KM Javadocs

Further Information

See the Javadoc package description com.sapportals.wcm.repository.service.subscription for:

Time-Based Publishing

This service enables you to control when a resource is visible or hidden. With the help of the service, information can automatically be made public or withdrawn at a specific time. This is useful to ensure that users are only presented with up-to-date information and are not overwhelmed by a large amount of outdated material. A common situation where time-dependent publishing is very useful is the handling of financial reports that publicize the quarterly results of a company. These reports have to be published on a certain date and are no longer of interest when a certain period of time has elapsed. Time-based publishing makes it easy to automatically publicize and withdraw this information at the right time.

Further Information

See the Javadoc package description com.sapportals.wcm. repository.service.appproperties for a detailed explanation of the API and underlying concepts.