This documentation:
Global services are applications that provide useful functionality that is frequently required by end-users, external applications or Knowledge Management components. Unlike repository services, global services are often independent of repositories. They normally do not need to access repositories or interact with repository managers.
An essential characteristic of global services is that only one
instance of a global service is instantiated at runtime. This
instance is used by all components. In contrast, repository services can
be instantiated several times at runtime. This means that different
repository managers can have their own instance of a repository service.
As global services are independent of repositories, they do not have to
be explicitly assigned to repositories in the configuration. They simply
have to be registered with a unique ID and implementation class.
The following sections describe the available services in
alphabetical order. Some of the services are actually part of the
repository framework and therefore also introduced in the
docuementation Repository Framework Services.
The action inbox service manages the KM inbox. Basically it provides a link between applications and the inbox of users. Applications can use the service to:
The main task of the service is to route the messages from the application to the correct inbox and to organize the entries in the inbox into predefined categories. In addition, the service enables users to process messages by giving them direct access to the functions of the associated application. To process a message, a user simply needs to choose an action offered in the inbox. The action is then directed back to the application which presents the user with the appropriate functions. It is the task of the service to provide the direct link between the message and the functions of the application.
Further Information
See the Javadoc package description com.sapportals.wcm.service.actioninbox for:
The Knowledge Management application allows users to check out resources to edit them with a PC application on the local host. The checkout service stores and provides all information related to this checkout process. It does not execute the checkout operation itself, but sets the status and keeps track of information related to the operation. For example, it can determine the host and path to a checked out resource or find out whether users are allowed to checkout resources.
The crawler service provides functions to create and manage crawlers. Crawlers are used to determine all the resources contained in a Content Management (CM) repository and to obtain references to them. The behavior of crawlers can be controlled in various ways. For example, they can be instructed to find resources that match certain conditions.
Various applications use the crawler. For example, the CM indexing service uses the crawler when it builds indexes to enable search and classification operations. It uses the crawler to get references to all the resources in a directory which must be indexed. It passes the references on to a search engine which then accesses and analyses the corresponding resources to build an index. The subscription service also makes use of the crawler. It schedules the crawler to find out the contents of directories at regular intervals. It can then determine whether any objects in the directories have changed in the time between the scheduled crawls.
Note that a new crawler has been implemented in the package com.sapportals.wcm.service.xcrawler. The new implementation allows crawler to be resumed after a restart of the underlying SAP J2EE Engine. The previous implementation in package com.sapportals.wcm.service.crawler has been deprecated.
Further Information
See the package description com.sapportals.wcm.service.xcrawler for:
The Knowledge Management platform includes functionality to create and manage indexes. As indexes are the basis for a number of powerful features, index management plays a central role in the KM environment. Different types of indexes enable different types of operations. For example, a classification index enables the classification of documents and a search index enables the retrieval of information. The index management functionality can be used to build and administer search and classification indexes.
Further Information
If you want to use a 3rd party search engine, you can implement your own index service. The KM index management service consolidates all search results coming from different implementations of the index service and presents them to the end user. For more information, see the how-to guide:
Integrating 3rd Party Search Engines into KM Index Management
This service manages metadata for custom properties. The Knowledge Management environment distinguishes between two types of properties that can be assigned to resources:
When custom properties are entered, errors and inconsistencies can easily occur. For this reason, the property configuration service offers a way of predefining these properties and storing metadata about them that can be used to regulate the use and input of properties. The service allows applications to define characteristics and value ranges for properties which are valid for all repositories. This definition can then be used by an application to ensure that property data is always entered consistently and correctly.
The metadata for predefined properties helps to control user input. For example, an application can use the metadata to display the names and value ranges which are predefined for properties on the user interface. When a user enters a value for a property, he simply selects the property and one of the values offered. As a result, property data is entered correctly and can subsequently be used as a reliable basis for other operations like a property search.
You can group together predefined properties in an ordered fashion using the property structure service. Properties can be assigned to groups and these can, in turn, be assigned to structures. Groups can be nested so that every structure and group can contain properties and groups.
Property groups and structures are used to render properties in a predefined order.