By Lux
June 14, 2005
New in Sitellite 4 is an advanced revision control system called
Rex, which replaces the old one and offers far more in terms of
functionality and flexibility. Some of the key new features in Rex
include:
- Drivers for separate revision stores. This allows you to store your
versions in any way you want -- in the database (the default), in the
filesystem, in CVS or Subversion -- just by creating and then
specifying for your content collection a new store driver.
- Drivers for separate collection sources. A source is the location
and format of the data that you want to keep versions of changes to.
Rex allows you to attach revision control to any data source, provided
a driver exists, without requiring any changes at all to the data
source of the collection. So if you want to manage a remote FTP
server's contents through the Sitellite Control Panel, including a
complete revision history for each file, all you need to do is write
the driver. This opens a world of posibilities not so readily available
in other revision control systems.
- Facets. Facets, also called "Search Parameters" in the Sitellite
Control Panel, allow you to quickly perform compound search queries on
large collections, based on pre-defined "facets" (a facet is a field
that is configured to be searchable in this way), in seconds and with
unparalleled simplicity. For example, say you want to search for
products in the Sports section between $10 and $20 in price, with a
status of "Archived". This would be a matter of just a few clicks. This
can make the need for reporting also less important, since it can
practically double as a reporting utility. And the best part about it
is, the more content the more useful you'll find this idea of facets.
- Tight integration with Sitellite, including the Scheduler, and SiteSearch, via simple INI-formatted configuration files.
Creating a Rex Collection
A Rex collection consists of at least one database table (a second
when you want versioning, which we'll assume you do for the purposes of
this article, however it is entirely optional), and a configuration
file, called a "collection definition file".
Page 1: Creating a Rex Collection
Page 2: The Database Schema
Page 3: The Collection Definition File
Page 4: The Collection Definition File (Continued)
Page 5: Accessing Rex Programmatically
Page 6: Supplimentary Rex APIs
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