Concepts (SAP Library - Knowledge Provider (BC-SRV-KPR))

Concepts

Entities and Relations

The following entity relationship diagram illustrates the components and terminology used in CMS:

The individual entities are explained in detail below (see also Document Management with Knowledge Provider):

The SAP system is the central instance where the Document Management Service (see also Document Management Service (BC-SRV-KPR)) and the Content Management Service are implemented.

Location refers to the location of a host (content server, cache server, application server) or user (client). Locations are used to choose the optimum route when cascaded caching (see also Cascaded Caches) and content server aliases (see also Content Server Alias) are being used.

A content server is an external storage system. It can be accessed via the HTTP Content Server Interface (see also SAP Content Server HTTP 4.5 Interface).

A content server administrates content repositories (see also Content Repositories). The Knowledge Provider stores documents only in repositories. The content server hides the technical details of how these repositories are actually implemented.

Repositories have the following advantages over, for example, file systems:

Á repository is abstracted from the physical storage location. Repositories can be created in the R/3 database, in SAP Content Servers, or in third-party content servers. This has the effect of decoupling the physical access information (server name, access protocol, TCP port, storage type (file system, table access, Web server)) from the logical data access procedure.

The equivalent of a repository in R/3 Customizing is the content category (see also Content Categories).

The Knowledge Provider differentiates between logical documents and physical documents (see also Concepts and Context Resolution).

Documents often consist of several different elements. For example, a typical HTML page can consist of a frameset, various pictures, stream data, text, and possibly script code. The individual elements represent components. A component ID identifies a component. In the simplest case, the component ID is a file name. Each component is assigned to only one physical document, while each document normally consists of at least one component. You can access whole documents and specific components using HTTP.

You specify in the document model (see also Content Models) what document types are used in an application. The Knowledge Provider provides tools for creating these models.

Note

The necessary Customizing steps are provided in the Implementation Guide (IMG) under SAP Web Application Server ® Basis Services ® Knowledge Provider ® Content Management Service.

Document Classes and Categories

Using the basic DMS concepts of logical documents, physical documents, and components (see also DMS Concepts), you can group several physical documents in physical document classes. Each physical document class is assigned a default content category.

Repositories and Categories

A physical document is identified by the document ID and a content category. The content category only exists at a purely logical level. Each content category, in turn, is assigned a content repository, which represents the physical equivalent of the content category. The content repositories provide the physical storage location. Various repository types can be used here, for example, HTTP or the R/3 database. The repository types, in turn, are assigned concrete content servers, such as an HTTP content server for the storage category HTTP.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

Note

The structure repository is only of importance when CMS is being used in conjunction with the Knowledge Warehouse.