System and method for providing generic controls in a communities framework

• US 20070112849A1
• Filed: 03/03/2006
• Published: 05/17/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 11/17/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: BEA Systems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: McMullen, Cindy, Polk, Ray, Wille, Jason
• Granted Patent: US 7,493,329 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

A community that is accessed via a portal is disclosed, for maintaining user membership during collaboration on a project. A repository containing resources is provided wherein the data is stored nodes and each node is associated with a collaboration resource. The resources can each have a set of properties or attributes. A content object can be provided for wrapping each node and for specifying what type of resource the node holds data for. A generic control can be implemented in order to handle various business logic for the developer in terms of the collaboration resources. The generic control can deal with the content object wrappers instead of nodes. Developers can use the generic controls in order to obtain an abstracted interface to the content management system API. The generic control can also contain an extensible control for performing CRUD operations on the data nodes.

Claims

1. A system for providing generic controls for a communities framework, comprising:

a repository containing data stored nodes wherein each node holds data for a collaboration resource, the resource having one or more properties;

a server that provides a content object for wrapping the node wherein the content object is associated with the node and defines the type of resource contained in the node;

an extensible control for performing operations on the node;

a generic control wrapping the extensible control, the generic control configured to handle business logic in terms of content objects via use of the extensible control.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the node is a collection of properties and values that describe content as well as content itself.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the generic control implements the extensible control in order to manipulate node data associated with the content object.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the extensible control is configured to map the content object to the node in the repository.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the extensible control performs at least on of create, update, read and delete operations on the node via content management APIs.

6. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a community accessed via a portal, the community maintaining user membership in the environment and including one or more members having access to the repository and sharing the resource.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the resource is dynamically created from the node at run time by instantiating the content object for the node.

8. The system of claim 7 wherein the dynamically created content object is cached by caching a unique key associated with the content object class.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the generic control is a generic Java class object which enables data type inheritance for the content object.

10. The system of claim 1 wherein the generic control contains the extensible control thereby providing an abstracted interface for a developer to the data in the content management system.

11. A method of providing generic controls for a communities framework, comprising:

providing a repository containing a resource having one or more properties wherein resource data is stored in a node in the repository,

wrapping the node with a content object;

providing an extensible control for performing operations on the node;

wrapping the extensible control with a generic control, the generic control configured to handle the business logic by interacting in terms of content objects.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the node is a collection of properties and values that describe content as well as content itself.

13. The method of claim 11 wherein the generic control implements the extensible control in order to manipulate node data associated with the content object.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein the extensible control is configured to map the content object to the node in the repository.

15. The method of claim 11 wherein the extensible control performs at least on of create, update, read and delete operations on the node via content management APIs.

16. The method of claim 11 further comprising:

providing a community accessed via a portal, the community maintaining user membership in the environment and including one or more members having access to the repository and sharing the resource.

17. The method of claim 11 wherein the resource is dynamically created from the node at run time by instantiating the content object for the node.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the dynamically created content object is cached by caching a unique key associated with the content object class.

19. The method of claim 11 wherein the generic control contains the extensible control thereby providing an abstracted interface for a developer to the data in the content management system.

20. A computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed by one or more processors cause the system to:

providing a repository containing a resource having one or more properties wherein resource data is stored in a node in the repository,

wrapping the node with a content object;

providing an extensible control for performing operations on the node;

wrapping the extensible control with a generic control, the generic control configured to handle the business logic by interacting in terms of content objects.