Storing URLs
Storing URLs
Use
The Knowledge Provider can administrate documents that are accessible via external URLs. Instead of storing the actual content of such documents, Knowledge Provider can simply store the corresponding URLs.
Features
When a request for read access to such a document is processed, the same results are returned as if the content itself were stored. This is because at runtime, Knowledge Provider gets the current content from the URL.
Read access is carried out more or less transparently, using the same modules as for documents with stored content.
Whether a document is stored by means of its URL or whether its actual content is specified in the sub-type of the repository that is assigned to the document category (see below).
The URL is analyzed only at the time of reading, that is, at check-in the URL is merely stored. If the URL in question links to dynamic pages, Knowledge Provider displays the content that is available and most up-to-date at the time the display request is made.
In the case of read access, note that the Knowledge Provider gets the content itself via the URL. In such cases the Web server may return an error message (for example, if a link is faulty, the Web server returns a message that the page could not be found). The Knowledge Provider interprets this message as document content and displays it accordingly.
If the Web server retrieves the content independently of the browser, the document retrieval process can fail due to the absence of a browser.
Implementation
This function can be implemented by means of a sub-type. This sub-type is introduced along with the content repositories (see also
Content Repositories) in transaction OAC0 in addition to the already existing repository type (SAP database, HTTP content server). This sub-type defines the difference between the storage location of the content and the storage location of the URL.
Currently, this function is only supported for SAP database repositories.