6.1 Overview of Integration Methods

Several easy, flexible methods are available for integrating Content Server with enterprise applications such as application servers, catalog solutions, personalization applications, and enterprise portals, and client-side software.

Content Server not only serves as a content management solution for content-centric Web sites, but also provides a scalable content management infrastructure that supports multiple enterprise applications in many diverse environments and platforms. The integration solutions enable other enterprise applications to access content managed by the content management system and provides these applications with critical content management capabilities such as full-text and metadata searching, library services, workflow, subscription notifications and content conversion capabilities through a wide array of integration methods.

In general, these integration methodologies serve to translate or pass methods and associated parameters with the goal of executing content server services. The various Content Server services are the "window" for accessing the content and content management functions within Content Server. For example, one simple integration option is to reference content that is managed within Oracle UCM by persistent URL. Other integration options are to use the Java API, the COM integrations, or the ActiveX control.

The focus of this chapter is to present the available integration options, suggest an approach, (like IdcCommand X, or persistent URL, or SOAP), and provide information about where to get the detailed documentation on that approach. Specifically, this chapter provides basic conceptual information about the integration of Content Server within network system environments using various protocols, interfaces, and mapping services.