Creating new Content Pages via a Configuration Update

It’s been a while since my last post and I apologize for the lengthy absence. It’s not that there hasn’t been anything to say – far from it. It’s just that those quiet moments where random thoughts are massaged into something coherent have been hard to come by lately. That being said, it’s time to jump back into the fray.

Click Happenings

On any given day, I’m involved in a broad array of activities and projects here in the Beaverton office. This allows me a perspective that I wouldn’t otherwise get if focused on a single project. This horizontal awareness allows me to see trends and patterns and I thought I’d share some of them with you today. I encourage you to participate in the discussion by either commenting on this post, or posting to the forums at http://forums.ClickCommerce.com.

Epic Battle: Simplicity Versus Complexity

I’ve seen this too many times to not consider it a common theme in every project. I’m sure I’m not going out on a limb when I say that everyone starts their project with the goal of simplifying their current process, but with all that can be accomplished with the Extranet framework and starter solutions, the temptation to add additional complexity is often tough to resist. I submit the following for your consideration:

Complexity is evil and should only be allowed into your project when absolutely necessary

Strong statement, I know, but I find that we don’t ask the question “Is there a simpler way?” often enough. I’ve been wondering lately why this is the case and have formed a theory:

Simple is boring and we don’t like being bored

Now, before you disagree with me, let me explain.

The Dark Side of the Moon feeling

This morning I had a moment to reflect on how differently I’m able to interact with my two sons, one 15 and the other 13. My oldest son has reached a point in his life where he enjoys conversation. No subject is out of bounds and I think I get as much or more out of the discussions as he does. This is in stark contrast to what my younger son is able to provide at the moment. With him it’s the typical parent-child dialog where the parent has to play 20 questions just to get anything out of the child and there are more moments of silence than moments of verbal exchange. I’m not complaining, I realize this is typical and I had the same experience with my older son when he was that age. I’ve come to consider that age as a “Dark Side of the Moon” period. But it is very frustrating.

Click Documentation Tools 1.0

It’s long been a desire of mine to be able to automatically generate Object Model documentation for an Extranet-based store so I’m very happy to announce Version 1.0 of Click Documentation Tools!

Getting external data into your store

Extranet 5.6 and 5.7 enabled greater access to the data stored in the underlying database by exposing more data in standard SQL tables and automatically creating SQL Views that simplify the task of authoring SQL Queries to extract information. All of this is intended to support the needs for advanced reporting or data extraction. In other words, they are targeted at getting data out of Extranet. Thinking about how best to get data into the Extranet database is a completely different matter, however.

An Approach to Parallel Amendments

Goals

This post outlines steps to support an implementation for parallel amendments. The described approach is guided by the following principles:

Performance
Only create data that is necessary to support the functional requirements and avoid long running transactions. New amendments should not need to cause the creation of a complete copy of the previously approved protocol.

Ease of Review
Provide features that improve the overall experience of the reviewer.

Efficiency
Avoid the review bottleneck by allowing for amendments of different types to be in process at any given time.

Ease of Maintenance
While supporting the first two principles, the design should minimize redundancy of configuration

This is based upon ideas that have been floating in my head for a while now and largely driven by my desire to effectively support parallel amendments and dramatically reduce the dependence upon clone. We’re in the middle of the first real implementation of this approach and so far so good.

ProjectValidationRule Version 2

Since initially making the Project Validation Rules available for download, I’ve seen it successfully incorporated into several sites. I’m now happy to post version 2 of this package which extends the core features originally described in the original post on December 4th, 2009.

Developer Quick Tip: An URL that’s easier to share

Today, I thought I’d share a little known trick to shorten and simplify the URLs you share with others. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the vast majority of URLs to your site that look something like this:

https://www.clickcommerce.com/cc/Rooms/DisplayPages/LayoutInitial?Container=com.webridge.entity.Entity%5BOID%5B74531D0B99B5E14E848802448409917B%5D%5D

LayoutInitial is a primary driver of most content pages, including personal pages, and project workspaces. The way it knows which project workspace, personal page, or content page to display is by looking at the value passed via the Container query string parameter. While the computer has no problem reading this value, it’s not so easy for us humans to share this with each other. But, wait! There’s a better way…

2010 AALAS Conference

It’s hard to believe a year has gone by since my last visit to the annual AALAS conference but there’s no avoiding the truth as I’m now at 32,000 feet on my way to Atlanta for this year’s edition of the show. Last year was my first time and it was interesting to see the wide variety of exhibitors showing their wares big and small. On the large end, I saw massive automated feeding and cleaning systems and on the small end I was amazed at the grain-of-rice size RFID chips designed to be injected under the skin of individual mice.