Northern Collaborative Technologies

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Web Content Management with Lotus Domino

• Andrew Pollack
• Northern Collaborative Technologies
• http//www.thenorth.com

Proud member of The Penumbra Group http//www.penu
mbragroup.com
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What We'll Cover

• Choosing Domino for Web content
• Supporting multiple languages
• Securing a Domino application
• Exploring an actual content management system

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Publish or Perish

• Check back weekly for new content!
• Last updated July 3, 1998
• Content draws users, graphics don't
• Well, at least not business graphics
• Web designers know code, not content

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How is a Web Page Like a Wedding Invitation?

• You want just a few lines of simple content
• You pay an expert to produce it
• It takes two weeks to see the result
• The expert never gets it right the first time
• Can I have that in Kanji?

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Power to The People

• The content owner is the best author
• Its their audience
• Its their interest area
• Its usually their language
• Its their budget
• If you give them control of the page
• It will be what they want
• You can focus on other things

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Summary Top 5 Reasons To Let Content Owners
Publish

• They need it today
• Budget? What budget?
• "Just a little more to the left..."
• Don't have any web developers who speak Cantonese
• Otherwise, you have to do it yourself

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Where Domino Fits

• Front ends and back ends and middleware, Oh my!
• Domino, WebSphere, and DB2 -- who does what?
• What scale really means

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Front ends

• Interaction with the user
• Great for holding information
• Not so good for storing data
• Lotus Domino, Apache

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Back ends

• Great for holding lots of data
• Not so good for storing information
• IBM DB2, Oracle, SQL Server
• Lotus Domino

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Middleware

• Ties the front end to the back end
• Contains business and security logic
• Puts the Bop, in the Bop-Shu-bop
• adds dynamic data
• Servlets, JSP's
• Lotus Domino forms and agents

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The 100 Domino Model
Big Happy Domino Server
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Domino, WebSphere, DB2 - The J2EE Model
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Domino is design

• From concept to creation -- rapid development
• It's a flexible container -- a great place for
  your stuff
• Authentication and authorization are built in

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DB2 is transactional data

• Price lists
• Parts inventory
• Financial data
• Multi-phase commit

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WebSphere is Middleware

• Connects Domino's design to DB2's data
• Thousands of transactions per second

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What Scale Really Means - Data

• How Much Data
• If you're talking about millions of records its
  Data. Put it in a relational database.
• Yes, I know you CAN put millions of documents
  into a Domino database, but think about the data
  first
• Is it content or transactions?

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What Scale Really Means - Users

• How Many Users?
• Web users are like snowflakes
• One isn't a problem, it's when they gang up
• They're really cold -- when they get angry

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Is it content or transactions?

• Content is "easy" to serve
• Transactions are harder
• Where is the data?

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Summary Where Domino Fits

• Domino is Design
• Can also be middleware and/or data storage
• WebSphere is middleware
• Great for high volume and transactions
• DB2 is data storage -- and lots of it
• If you're talking about millions of anything, its
  probably data

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Domino WANTS to be multilingual

• Just turn it on and let it go!
• Tools like Global Workbench
• Automatic content translation tools
• My favorite settings
• Those that make my customers happy

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Domino is multilingual inside!

• ASCII? One byte per character?
• How 80's of you! That went out with big hair and
  alligator shirts
• Speaking Chinese runs in families
• Language properties are part of the text -- they
  come from the author
• So why do you have to do anything?
• Many languages have several different versions
  and character sets

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Design Tools like Global Workbench

• These tools are GREAT for design elements
• Can be hard to retrofit
• Best if used when creating new applications
• These tools are not helpful for content
  translation

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Automatic Content Translation Tools

• The holy grail of content management
• Not quite there, but getting better
• Provide users "the gist" of the page
• Can be useful, but a high cost for imperfect
  translation
• Users are still better

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My Favorite Language Settings
These are the settings chosen by the content
owners at my largest customer...
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Securing a Domino Application

• This is a REALLY BIG topic
• How secure do you need it?
• First, protect the operating system
• Authentication vs. authorization
• Security vs. obscurity
• Data security vs. transmission security

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How secure do you need it?

• What kind of data is being served?
• Personal information
• Medical or financial information
• Business planning data
• Competitive information
• Are there legal requirements?
• Many kinds of credit, medical, and personal data
  have specific legal security requirements

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First, Protect the Operating System

• The OS is the door to everything
• Get in that door, and the data is open
• Anything that listens is vulnerable
• File sharing, printer sharing, universal plug 'n
  access
• A quality firewall closes the doors
• Doesn't let anything talk to what's listening
• Keep up to date on patches
• Keep up to date on warnings
• HTTP//WWW.CERT.ORG

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Authentication tells us who you are

• Name and password secret handshake
• Be careful of who's watching!
• Trusted certificates a photo ID
• Difficult to forge, but frustrating to some users
• Bio authentication well, Bio authentication
• Your thumb should not have value if detached from
  your hand.

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Authorization tells us what you can do

• Access control groups
• ACL entries -- including roles
• Reader and author field data types

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Security is protected data, even if you know
where it is

• Read access fields
• ViewTemplateDefault
• File and directory controls
• Database ACLs

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Obscurity is hidden data

• Non-linked pages
• Hidden views
• Document indexes
• Many skilled users DO know how to get this data
• Even less skilled users will try url hacking to
  see what's there

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Transmission security -- stopping the man in the
middle

• Make sure the person you're talking to is the
  only one you're talking to
• Sniffers can read the packets
• SSL encrypts the connection
• Basic authentication without SSL is wide open to
  the man in the middle

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Summary Securing A Domino Application

• First, secure the operating system
• Build the application carefully
• Obscurity is not security
• Use the access control tools
• Don't forget the 'man in the middle

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A Real Content Management System

• Automatic layout makes your colors brighter and
  your whites whiter!
• Any simple text can look great with the right
  layout design around it!
• Never let them see you sweat
• Don't show users links to pages they don't have
  access rights to view!

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The layout defines the overall look and feel
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Store the layout as a header footer subform and
display it on the web
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Add some simple rich text
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Display it through the layout
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Automating Index Pages

• Index pages provide quick, organized access to
  content
• Avoid showing secure links to users without
  authorization to use them

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Here's A Sample Index Page
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Index pages are heavily coded for optimal design
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Link definitions fill in the lookup view
Reader Names fields keep the link from from the
view, preventing display for users who cannot
access the content
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Notes view lookup returns a result
The view column formula....
Creates html output for each document....
Which gets included right onto the form
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Rich Text Rocks for Content Owners

• Easy to use -- just like mail
• Supports the content owner's language
• Flexible and powerful for advanced users
• Store HTML and Javascript natively
• Don't forget tools like Midas to create and
  manage rich text programatically

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An Actual Content Management System

• Screenshots are Taken from live sites

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Creating content
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Controlling access
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Sample Rich Text Based Content
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More Rich Text Power
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Editor Approval Cycles -- That's Old Hat

• This is basic workflow
• Lotus Notes has OWNED this space since it
  invented the stuff more than 10 years ago
• To implement workflow in new sites, check out
  Lotus Workflow 3.x

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Your Turn!

• This presentation at Admin 2002 goes into a few
  more topics and is more in depth
• Youre welcome to contact me
• Andrewp_at_thenorth.com
• http//www.thenorth.com
• Im also doing Development Tips Tricks for
  Administrators at Admin 2002
• Now its time for Questions Answers

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Questions?

• Submit your questions now by clicking on the
  Ask A Question button in the bottom left corner
  of your presentation screen.