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SGI's Supportfolio Online System Developed by Zope Corporation System

SGI provides a vast array of support materials online for the benefit of their customers, including: documentation, help , newsletters, service bulletins, software patches, operating system downloads and CD images. Maintaining multiple files, ensuring most-current version availability and ease of navigation were key requirements for their system.

SGI (NYSE: SGI) is the world's leader in high-performance computing, visualization and the management of complex data whose services and solutions enable technical/creative customers to gain strategic and competitive advantages. SGI's innovative systems are used to design and build safer cars and airplanes, discover new medications and oil reserves, predict the weather, entertain (e.g., movie special effects), or provide mission-critical support for government and defense.

Zope Corporation Develops Custom Content Management System (CMS) for SGI

SGI partnered with Zope Corporation to build a state-of-the-art CMS to enhance their users' experience, while dramatically changing the paradigm of content management for a website with diverse content types.

Zope Innovates

Zope Corporation's solutions permit authors to publish and maintain content from different client platforms, including, including IRIX, Linux and Windows. Each user has a customizable workspace/desktop permitting them to access their content with a Web Browser, an FTP client, or through a WebDAV client. Authors can use tools such as Dreamweaver, to work in a WYSIWYG (i.e., what you see is what you get ) environment.

Zope Solution Provides Innovation with Integrity and Efficiency

"We are very pleased with Zope Corporation's implementation of its content management system for Supportfolio," said Satish Mirle, engineering manager for Electronic Services at SGI Technology Solutions. "These tools provide quick and efficient access for various organizations within the company to manage and publish their own content, resulting in optimum delivery of support materials for our customers. "Zope Corporation has delivered value beyond our expectations," adds Mirle. "They have demonstrated both creativity and professionalism, and their ongoing support has been exceptional".

How the System Works

Content is staged in segregated Development, Review and Production areas. "Hands-off" workflow with configurable review steps for each content type, control the movement of content between the staging areas. Key features of the system's content types:

  • Reviewers can be selected arbitrarily for each content type
  • New content types can be added quickly and easily
  • Arbitrary metadata can be attached to each content type and easily changed
  • Editing-forms automatically change, to reflect changes in metadata schema
  • Skins assigned to content types, enable distinct "look and feel"

In addition to the sheer volume of documents managed by the system, many files are extremely large binary distributions. Zope's CMS aids in the management of the binaries by supporting automatic remote mirroring. Authors can annotate binaries in Zope without affecting the actual files. Zope includes a highly refined search engine including relevance ranking and arbitrary weighting across multiple textual metadata elements. Binary files such as PDF, may be indexed along with the automatic indexing of all author-generated content. Automatic notification of content publication is achieved via the SOAP protocol to a separate notification server.

Zope integrates with SGI's J2EE environment via a suite of remote XML services providing: searching, metadata access and content retrieval.

Challenges

  • Ensure customers find solutions quickly and easily
  • Develop/maintain large volume of content with a small, distributed staff
  • Seamlessly integrate Zope behind a J2EE server environment

Approach

  • Content staged in segregated Development, Review and Production areas.
  • "Hands-off" workflow (with per content type configurable review steps)
  • Advanced search engine for locating content
  • Author content using multiple interfaces
  • Publish data from Zope in XML for easy integration with J2EE

Benefits

  • Solution that permits authors to publish and maintain content from different client platforms, including IRIX, Linux and Windows.
  • Authors have customizable workspace/desktops permitting access to their content with a Web Browser, an FTP client, or through a WebDAV client.
  • Authors can use tools such as Dreamweaver, to work in a WYSIWYG (i.e., what you see is what you get ) environment.
  • Innovation with integrity and efficiency

We decided to use Zope and ZSQL Methods to provide web interfaces to databases that contain information about large scientific datasets - such as starting date, number of data points, and quality metrics for the data. Starting with a working 'MySQL' database, using the pre-configured Apache that ships with Zope, we got a simple query working in well under 2 hours. Very impressive product!
- Joe VanAndel,
National Center for Atmospheric Research