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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