15.1 Understanding Items

An item is something more than its content. For example, a file item includes the file as well as information about the file, also known as item attributes. A file item's attributes can include its display name, author, publish date, expiration date, representative image, display setting, and so on. Each seeded item type includes a set of relevant attributes for which you provide values when you upload content to your portal. These values can be used in content searches to locate items with a particular author, keyword, publish date, classification—any attribute value associated with the item.

You will find a list of the base item types available out of the box from Oracle Portal in Appendix A, "Oracle Portal Seeded Objects".

Oracle Portal provides many item-related features that support document collaboration among different users and groups. These include:

• Versioning—When item versioning is enabled, previous versions of an item are retained instead of being overwritten when the item is edited. This means that you can have a record of all the changes made to an item and can revert to a previous version if necessary. See Section 15.12, "Using Item Version Control".

• Item level security—Item level security enables you to shield unprivileged users from viewing individual items or to grant a higher level of access on an item than might otherwise be granted on the item's containing page. See Chapter 18, "Protecting Your Content".

• Document control—With document control, groups of users can edit items using a check in and check out process. This feature restricts a user from overwriting an item when it is checked out by another user. See Section 15.4.4, "Enabling Item Check Out".

• Publish dates—When an item includes the Publish Date attribute, you can specify the day and time an uploaded item will display to other users. See Section 15.4.3, "Setting a Publish Date for an Item".

• Expiry dates—When an item includes the Expiration Period attribute, you can specify how long an item will display on a page. See Section 15.11, "Expiring Items".

• Approvals—When you are granted the page privilege Manage Items With Approval, the items you upload initiate a process that delays publication of the items until they have been approved. See Chapter 21, "Setting Up an Approval Chain" and Section 2.7, "Getting Your Content Approved".