In a blink of the eye, it’s……….
Mister Po J.F.

WE’LL SURELY GO BACK AFTER 27NOV :| it’s unlucky but the weather was fantastic, smooth breeze brushes through the air… (:


But have a little fun here and there


From Red.traffic – Ann Siang Road, Club Street then Raffles Place – Town! We have our longest walk, I think.

♥ ♥

And I got myself 3 Audrey Hepburn badges! Love it! She’s like the legend of 1960s.

She said, “Your heart just breaks, that’s all. But you can’t judge, or point fingers. You just have to be lucky enough to find someone who appreciates you.”

P.S. Yeah! Just love my weekends!
[Got the waiting cab
Stopped at the red light
Address, unsure of
But it turned out just right]
So have a nice day,
Have a nice dayyyyyyy……

The Swiss company Heads came up last year with a brilliant identity system for Namics, based on the inputs from the company’s employees.

They just won a reddot design award to be awarded the next December the 9th. Congratulations.

Spacewalker lampen er designet av Constantin Wortmann for Dark. Den prisbelønnede lampen har vunnet 6 REDDOT design priser. I Norge kan du blant annet kjøpe lampen hos Euklides. Kul eller hva?

Foto: Dark

The recent acquisition of Vignette by OpenText and the uncertainty surrounding the future of Open Text Web Solutions, the Web Content Management System formerly known as RedDot., has forced us to take a look and consider the options that exist for customers who are considering migrating to a new Web Content Management System.

We took a good long look at this from many angles and given the requirement for similar functionality, ease of use and the need for a Microsoft-based solution, we believe the best candidate for migration is Sitecore.

So we decided to take our existing RedDot Environment Synchronization tool and re-purpose the “target” so it can be targeted towards any CMS. The first being Sitecore for the obvious reasons we noted above.

Some screenshots of the system are below:

While this tool will not automate 100% of the migration, it will remove the repetitive work of migrating some key pieces of configuration:

• Metadata
• Templates
• Users / Groups
• Workflows
• Partial content migration

This tool will provide a significant benefit to anyone migrating from RedDot to Sitecore.  It will reduce the effort required and inturn lower the Professional Services $ you’ll need to spend to migrate to a new Web Content Management System.

Once completed, we plan to add additional CMS’s that we’ll be able to migrate to.  The possible list includes:
- Day Communique
- Jahia CMS (for Java shops with personalization)
- Vignette and Vignette portal
- TBD

Let us know what you think and if you have any feature requests!

For more Oshyn blog posts visit: http://www.oshyn.com/resources/blog.html

Queries: dynamic content is all about queries and no matter how cool this sounds most of the time we face the need to improve the response time, improve performance to avoid user discomfort (nobody likes to wait more than 5 seconds for a rendered list).

A few days ago I was working with a site built with RedDot and LiveServer (Open Text products) and we found in some logs, warnings about the use of some target dynaments without a redundant database; basically what the warning recommended was the use of redundant database to accelerate the LiveServer content response. So I checked the documentation and what I found was interesting:

A Target DynaMent allows to access specific content by comparing content attributes which are stored in a database, this has nothing to do with Verity (LiveServer search engine). This content is delivered in an xml format which can be formated with XSL, but this is for another topic.

Creating a redundant database structure is not difficult, in fact it’s just some clicks to access the interface, name the redundant database structure, add the desire attributes – content attributes, not project attributes: content.Attribute instead of project.Attribute – and create the indexes, it’s not to hard; what’s complicated but really fun is to think the indexes structure, because a good implementation could help you to improve the response performance, you must choose carefully which attributes will be add to an index and after the redundant database structure has been created you must test with some queries using Target Dynaments to check performance and probably found a better index to create.

For example: after I created the redundant structure, most of the warnings disappeared so I started testing with some target dynaments: without the redundant database structure an xml result page with about 300 results took about 1.7 seconds to 2.5 seconds; with the redundant structure the same result page was displayed in about 0.7 seconds to 1.3 seconds.

It’s great when you have this kind of tools that help you to improve your site performance but remember it’s necessary to think carefully how to use this tools; this is something I learned in this project, don’t play with databases unless you have a reason to do it.

For more Oshyn blog posts visit: http://www.oshyn.com/resources/blog.html

Latest Service Pack (1) for RedDot CMS 9 includes the PageBuilder rewrite in .NET that is part of the RedDot 10 product!

From the RedDot 9 SP1 Release Notes:

The following major features are new in this version:

The core page delivery and publishing engine component (PageBuilder) has been migrated to .NET. It allows multithreaded processing of publishing jobs and enhances the system performance of all core page building processes.

This is good because a number of our clients have needed the performance improvement that the .NET PageBuilder provides in RedDot 10, but were unsure about upgrading to the new UI of RedDot b/c of the need to retest and possibly retrain content editors.  This gives us a way to get the performance improvements without incurring the overhead of retraining and (hopefully) lowering the retesting effort for plugins and templates.

Upgrading is similar to all RedDot patches:
1. Download SP1 from OpenText Knowledge Center
2. Install SP1 (you must have the RedDotUser password)
3. Server restarts after installation
4. Login to Admin screens, goto ServerManager, “Update Database” for each project
5. Edit Lock to “Unrestricted Lock” for each project
6. Test everything to see if it still works

Steps 2-5 took about 2.5 hours.

Here is the direct link to the Service Pack:  http://mimage.opentext.com/support/ecm/secure/software/managementserver/managementserver9.0sp1build90128.zip (must be logged in to the knowledge.opentext.com) Good News on the RedDot CMS performance front!

Background:
Most of the websites include a flash component to highlight the features of the company, and for providing the users with the high level features that the site/company offers. But most of the times, these flash components have to be edited/managed by a programmer/web developer who knows some form of action script/language. As IT resources are thin and there are more important issues to handle, it becomes a problem for IT to make these minor changes to images, text on the flash slide. Any such changes sometimes result in lagtime, while the marketing team is expecting to get the changes done easily. Hence, it is of importance that these flash components be built in such a way that it is content editor managed.
There would be different sections of the website. It would be great if specific slides show on specific sections of the site.

Requirements:
The challenges/requirements for this flash component
- Content editor managed flash piece
- Different flash slides for each section of the site
- Personalized per site visitor, section of the site

Solution:
The different sections involved in this are as follows: – Content managed page which will be published as xml with the images paths, and text to display and all other animation effect variables
- Flash action script Reading XML
- Passing user profile details as parameters to flash file
- Programming logic to filter through xml sections based on the parameters received to flash script.

Example xml for dynamic xml looks something like this:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<nodes>
<node code=”section1″ photo=”01.jpg” contentTxt=”ContentText for section1″ contentColor=”0C3376″ contentAnim=”_x” />
<node code=”section2″ photo=”02.jpg” contentTxt=” ContentText for section2″ contentColor=”0C3376″ contentAnim=”_x” />
<node code=”section3″ photo=”03.jpg” contentTxt=” ContentText for section3″ contentColor=”0C3376″ contentAnim=”_y” />
<node code=”section4″ photo=”04.jpg” contentTxt=” ContentText for section4″ contentColor=”0C3376″ contentAnim=”_alpha” />
<node code=”section5″ photo=”05.jpg” contentTxt=” ContentText for section5″ contentColor=”0C3376″ contentAnim=”_y” />
</nodes>

The above xml shows few nodes of the xml that is read by the flash file. Each node represents a slide in the flash movie, and the attributes of the node refer to the content of slide.
Anyone familiar with RedDot cms system will be able to break down the above xml into respective templates. One way to build it is by breaking into the following templates:

XMLRoot template
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?> <nodes> <%con_body%> </nodes>

XMLNode template
<node code=”<%stf_SectionName%>” photo=”<%img_Image%>” contentTxt=”<%stf_contentText%>” contentColor=”<%stf_contentColor%>” contentAnim=”<%optList_contentAnimation%>” />

You then create instances of these templates and edit the file name of the instance based on the XMLRoot as “flashxml.xml” or some filename with xml extension.
You would then have a template for embed flash code that accepts this xmlfile path (by using an anchor element linking to xml page instance) as the parameter for the flash file to read.
In this way by providing ways to change content in the xml file, the flash file contents can be easily changed by content editor without any intervention from IT.

Different flash piece for each section
1) Create a seperate instance of XML file per section
2) Create a seperate instance of Flash page having link to respective individual XML file per section created in previous step

This will provide for different flash piece for each section of the site.

Personalized flash piece per visitor
Once we have this basic version of flash working, we can build a more personalized flash by doing the following:
• By adding content attributes to the XMLNode which provide for filtering attributes (example “stf_Location”).
• Letting content editors define the value of the location for each XMLNode
• Adding another parameter to the flash file which will be user location, based on which the flash action script program will identify which nodes to be displayed.

In this way, we meet all our requirements. On a side note, this concept is applicable to not just OpenText Management Server(previously RedDot CMS) but can be extended to suit any CMS system in general.

One problem I have always encountered with RedDot is debugging the pre-executed script blocks.  Fortunately Gavin Cope came up with this superb solution which also has the benefit of moving the pre-executed files out of the main RedDot folder.

Modifications

I have added to Gavin’s work by:

1. Writing the error to a HTML file so it can be viewed easily in the browser
2. Adding a page with a list of all the error files in the logs folder

To create a HTML file for the error change the call to WriteToFile with the code below. Note, I have also changed the path for the PreExecute folder.

WriteToFile "C:\Websites\PreExecute\Logs\PreExecuteErrors_" & Year(Now) & Month(Now) & Day(Now) & _
			".html", " Date/Time: " & Now() & "<br />" & _
			" ASP Code: " & objASPError.ASPCode & "<br />" & _
			"ASP Description: " & objASPError.Description & "<br />" & _
			" Category: " & objASPError.Category & "<br />" & _
			" Column: " & objASPError.Column & "<br />" & _
			" Description: " & objASPError.Description & "<br />" & _
			" File: " & objASPError.File & "<br />" & _
			" Line: " & objASPError.Line & "<br />" & _
			" Number: " & objASPError.Number & "<br />" & _
			" Source: " & objASPError.Source & "<br />" & _
			"############################################################" & "<br />", True

For the list of errors create a new file in the PreExecute folder called ErrorList.asp and paste in the following script

<%
sDirectory = "/CMS/PreExecute/Logs/"
sPath = Server.MapPath(sDirectory)

Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set currentFolder = fso.GetFolder(sPath)
Set fileList = currentFolder.Files
%>
<html>
	<head>
		<title>RedDot : PreExecuteErrors</title>
	</head>

<body>
	<h1>List of files</h1>
	<ul>
		<% For Each file in fileList %>
		<li><a href="<%= sDirectory & file.Name %>"><%= file.Name %></a></li>
		<% Next %>
	</ul>
</body>

</html>

<%
Set fileList = Nothing
Set currentFolder = Nothing
Set fso = Nothing
%>

Again, thanks to Gavin for a great bit of lateral thinking which make template development much simpler.

Now if someone can create a plug-in so we can create templates in something other than a web browser, that would be superb.

Ich habe mir mal die Mühe gemacht und ein paar Reddot Design Award Gewinner von 2009 rausgesucht. Interessierte einfach aufs jeweilige Bild klicken.

Grohe Rainshower Icon Hand Shower

Noto Pendant Lamp

D35 Electronic Dictionary

LaCie Flat Cables

H2 Magic Cube  USB Hub

MS-208 McDonut Speaker

Cyber-shot DSC-T77 Digital Camera

MYchair Lounge Chair

]]> http://irinaguseva.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/open-text-somewhat-starts-vocalizing-vignette-plans/ Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:40:56 +0000 Irina Guseva http://irinaguseva.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/open-text-somewhat-starts-vocalizing-vignette-plans/ http://pressofanonpairot.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/red-dot-design-concept-yearbook-20072008/ Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:03:54 +0000 cheffykung http://pressofanonpairot.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/red-dot-design-concept-yearbook-20072008/

Wie schon vorher gezeigt, ich (mag Matroschkas – deleted) ich LIEBE Matroschkas. Die Matroschkaworld Serie ist klarer Favorit und hat sogar schon einen ordentlichen Stapel Preise abgeräumt. Unteranderem den heißbegehrten Reddot Award. Hier sind ein paar Schmankerl aus der Welt der putzigen Holzpuppen.

Flickr Maps – Matroschkas traveling the world
Flickr – Set 1 Set 2
FriendFeed – Was wird gezwitschert?
The Project – Graffiti Nextwall

Bing – matroschka images

Es ist nun schon über einen Monat her, dass ich mal wieder was geschrieben habe, was nicht heißen soll das ich den Blog vergessen habe. Im Gegenteil. Ich bin zur Zeit dabei, eine eigene, feste Domain für machmaleinenPUNKT zu beantragen um den Blog weiter zu festigen. Desweiteren denke ich über ein machmaleinenPUNKT-Forum nach, was jedoch jetzt noch nicht fest steht. Nebenbei bin ich noch auf der Suche nach interessierten und engagierten Bloggern die Lust haben, unter der machmaleinenPUNKT-Flagge zu segeln – wenn Du also interesse hast, melde dich bei holzbruch oder mir.

Leider fahren auch drei meiner besten Freunde diesen Monat in die Vereinigten Staaten was das Leben hier in Deutschland für mich wohl nicht viel schöner machen wird. Benedikt wird nach Sugarland in Texas fliegen, Klara nach Raleigh in North Carolina und Henry hat bis jetzt noch keinen endgültigen Bescheid darüber bekommen, wo er hinkommen wird. Eins ist schon jetzt klar, ich werde die drei vermissen da sie ein großer Bestandteil meines Alltagslebens sind.

Seit Ende letzten Monats existiert nun auch endlich unsere kleine “Produktionsfirma” RedDotPictures. Auch für diese arbeite ich an einer Website welche jedoch vermutlich noch auf sich warten lässt, da es viel arbeit ist, eine solche Website enstehen zu lassen. Es gibt jedoch schon einen YouTube-Channel auf dem ihr unsere Erstlingwerke anschauen könnt. Den Link findet ihr hier oder bei uns in der Linkliste.

Ich halte euch auf dem laufenden!

Alex

Juan Pablo Albuja – Friday, May 22, 2009

Oshyn often work with on OpenText/RedDot LiveServer integrations, and found that understanding how to integrate LiveServer and Drools can be very helpful for applying business rules and separating the logic from the application implementation. Now, I’d like to share some details on integrating LiveServer’s events and Drools 4.0.7

Drools is a rule engine implementation that describes “What to do” not “How to do it”. Drools allow developers to write natural language semantics for rule authors in order for business users to create rules to determine the behavior of applications under certain circumstances. For more details please check http://www.jboss.org/drools/.

On the other hand, Live Server supports events that can be triggered when content is updated, created or deleted. Live Server events can call actions defined by users like Java Methods. Java Methods are methods that can do any action related to the triggered event, and they need to be defined in Live Server.

The proposed architecture is to create a generic Java Method that is in charge of calling other Java Methods depending on the business rules defined with Drools. Following, is the proposed architecture for this integration.

When a page is published from the CMS or is updated from Live Server, the Generic JAVA Methods Caller is invoked by the events, “On Content Attribute Create”, “On Content Attribute Update” or “On Content Attribute Delete.” Then, this component is in charge of looking at the defined business rules to call the configured Java Method.

The component “Generic Java Methods Caller” is a registered jar in Live Server, configured to be called when one of the mentioned events is triggered. It uses a file called “JavaMethodsCaller.drl” that contains the business rules, for example:

rule “Rule Name”
when
p1 : Attributes()
p2 : Caller()
eval (p1.getStringAttibuteValue(“category”).equals(“article”))
then
p2.callJavaMethod(“com.oshyn.sample”,”toAction”); end

This rule means that when the published page has the category content attribute equal to “article”, the method “toAction” of the class “com.oshyn.sample” will be called. One important requirement is that the Java Method “toAction”, needs to have the sign public void foo (java.utilMap). Another requirement is that each Java Method that is going to be handled by this architecture does not need to be registered in Live Server because the “Generic Java Methods Caller” is the unique Java Method that needs to be registered. So, to include a new Java Method, the jar that contains it needs to exist in the folder Live Server Root/WEB-INF/lib, and then Tomcat must be restarted.

If you want to implement this architecture, you need the file JavaMethodsCaller.jar, and you also need to download Drools jars from here. Then you need to put the files JavaMethodsCaller.jar, core-3.2.3.v_686_R32x.jar, drools-core-4.0.7.jar, drools-compiler-4.0.7.jar, drools-analytics-4.0.7.jar, core-3.2.3.v_686_R32x.jar, mvel-1.3.1-java1.4.jar and antlr-runtime-3.0.jar in the folder Live Server Root/WEB-INF/lib and restart tomcat. The file JavaMethodsCaller.drl is located inside the file JavaMethodsCaller.jar.

As a conclusion, this architecture is applied very dynamically to manage Java Methods. By adding rules to the file .drl, we can determine which Java Method should be executed and under what conditions or circumstances.