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Background documentation Context Resolution  Locate the document in its SAP Library structure

The Knowledge Provider contains the concept of logical hyperlinks to logical documents. The ID of the logical document is the most important component of a logical hyperlink to a logical document. At runtime, a context string (attribute name 1 = attribute value 1, attribute name 2 = attribute value 2, and so on) is dynamically added to the logical hyperlink to resolve the hyperlink and to identify the physical document, its components, and its content. This process is called context resolution.

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One component represents one file on the content server. Therefore, one document can consist of several files. This is especially true of HTML documents, which often contain GIF graphics.

A physical document, on the other hand, represents an individual document and everything associated with that document, that is, its components. Since physical documents also contain document properties, which determine the version of a document, physical documents are evaluated in the context resolution process.

Logical documents, on the other hand, represent all documents belonging to a collection. This means that they also contain all physical documents. Logical documents do not contain any information relevant to context resolution and are not subject to the versioning process.
Logical documents group together the physical documents that logically belong to a group. The definition of a group and its properties depends on the relevant client application. References always refer to logical documents. This makes them independent of the lifecycle of individual documents.

Example

A number of versions of a document can exist simultaneously (see also Versioning).

A user is logged onto the SAP System in English, and is viewing the Knowledge Provider via a Web browser at the front-end. The user wants to view the English HTML version of the documentation "Knowledge Provider Concepts". A German user who is logged on in German, meanwhile, wants to view the German version of this documentation. Both users also expect to see the correct release of the documentation. The Knowledge Provider now compares the attributes of the user context with the corresponding document properties:

User Context Attributes

Document Properties

Logon language

Language

Viewer application

Format

Current SAP System release

SAP System release defined for the document

If there is a document in the collection whose properties all match the context attributes, the Knowledge Provider returns this document. Otherwise, the Knowledge Provider returns the document whose properties match most closely.

A Knowledge Provider client application can define additional context attributes and document properties (see also Attributes).

If there are a number of documents with the same number of matching properties, the Knowledge Provider activates application-specific context resolution in the form of application-specific function modules. These function modules evaluate the additional attributes so that a suitable document is returned, or they prioritize properties in the context of the current application.

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