New features and enhancements in SDL Contenta 5.3

This section lists features and enhancements introduced in SDL Contenta 5.3.

Solr Search

SDL Contenta 5.3 uses Solr as its search engine, replacing Verity. Solr is a Java application (32- or 64-bit) that runs as a standalone, full-text search server within a Jetty servlet container. It is scalable and customizable and can use either the HTTP or HTTPS protocol.

You must initiate the creation of the search index before you can perform a search. Contenta and Contenta S1000D use Solr to index data stored as content or property sheet metadata in objects used across one or more Contenta configurations. By default, all objects in all Contenta configurations will be indexed; however, you can restrict indexing to specific Contenta configurations and object types through AppData settings.

Whenever users modify object content, object names, object property sheet metadata, and the object hierarchy, a service or daemon called the "Crawler" will listen for these changes and export the affected Contenta objects to a Solr collection where these changes will be reindexed. This process is seamless. You do not have to manually rebuild a search index whenever changes are made; the Crawler constantly syncs changes made in the Contenta database with the Solr index.

The Contenta Web search interface was also redesigned to work tightly with the Solr search engine. The Contenta Explorer search interface is backward compatible with the Solr search engine.

For more information on Search, see Chapter 7 "Configuring Search" in the SDL Contenta Administrator User Guide.

Content Routing Project

Contenta now provides two types of projects for managing data, the Content Routing Project (CRP) and the standard Project. Both project types have the same behavior for creating and editing workflows, maintaining team members, and managing the post list.

The ContentRoutingProject object is more flexible than the standard Project. The ContentRoutingProject object allows its child objects to be forwarded individually, or as a group, to different tasks in the workflow. For instance, some child objects may be at the writing task while others are at the review task. This allows for individual objects to be moved through the workflow as soon as they are ready for the next task. Conversely, the standard Project and all of its child objects are forwarded as a single entity to the same task.

For more information on standard Projects and Content Routing Projects, see:
  • Chapter 6, "Managing Projects" in the SDL Contenta Web User Guide.
  • Chapter 3, "Contenta Projects" and Chapter 6 "Project Administration" in the SDL Contenta Explorer User Guide.

Changed APIs

Contenta API Changes
 
COM/CORBA API: 
   PCMSearch:
      New API:
         InitSolr
         SetSolrSortBy
         SetSolrMaxRows
         SetSolrSearchScope
 
      Behavior change:
         Search
         SearchProperty
         SearchContent
 
   PCMcommand:
 
      New API:
         GetPCMSearchInitSolr
         CRPForward

      Behavior change:
 
         GetPCMSearch
         Solr connection information will be initialized with default settings stored in either User AppData, if it is set or Global AppData if it is not.

   PCMProject:
 
      Behavior change:
      SearchProjects
         Drop of VDKVGWKey column
 
Web API
   PCMSync:
      New API:
         CRPForward
         GetWorkflowToolPermission

Accessing Product Documentation

The SDL Contenta product documentation is available in PDF format from the following sources:
  • The Contenta Explorer and Contenta Web interfaces (click Help > SDL Contenta Help).
  • The SDL Contenta documentation—including an Acrobat Catalog search index—is available as a .zip download from the following FTP Site: ftp://SDLdoc2:ReadTheDoc@ftp.sct.sdl.com/download

    Once you download the.zip file, and decompress it in a folder on your system, double-click search_contenta in Acrobat Reader, and then search away.