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Let’s begin by looking in the metadata.

Exploring metadata

In case you forgot, metadata fields are there to describe the actual data such as the file name, shooting date, and camera name for a digital picture.

There’re two types of metadata fields: Standard and Extended or Custom. Let’s take a closer look at what they can do for us.

Standard metadata

Standard metadata is essential for the system to function. These are fields like content ID, revision ID, check-in date, and author. Let’s take a quick look at all of them so you have a full picture.

Lab 2: Exploring standard metadata

Click on the Quick Search button on the top right. Yes, leave the search box blank. If you do that, you’ll get all content in the repository.

In the last column on the Search Results page click on the i icon on any of the result rows. That brings up a Content Info screen.

From this screen there is no way to tell which fields are Standard and which are Extended. So how do you tell?

Explore the database

That’s right. A Content Server uses a relational database, like Oracle or SQL Server to store its metadata, so let’s look there.

If you are using SQL Server 2005 as your database, then open SQL Server Management Studio, and if not then bring up your SQL tool of choice.

Check the list of columns in the table called Revisions (as shown in the following screenshot):

Most of the column names in Revisions are the standard metadata fields.

Here’s a list of the fields you will be using most often:

  • dID: ID of the document revision. This number is globally unique. If you have a project plan with three revisions—each of the three will have unique dID and all of them will have the same Content ID.
  • dDocName: this is the actual Content ID.
  • dDocType: content type of the document.

dDocName or Content ID is the unique identifier for a content revision set. dID is the unique identifier of each individual content revision within a set.
Being able to identify a content revision set is very useful, as it shows and tracks (makes auditable) the changes of content items over time.
Being able to identify each individual revision with dID is also very useful, so we can work with specific content revisions. This is one of the great advantages of the Content Server over other systems, which only store the changes between revisions. Full revision sets as well as individual revisions are managed objects and each one can be accessed by its own unique URL.

Now run this SQL statement:

select * from Revisions;

This shows the actual documents in the system and their values for standard meta fields (as shown in the following screenshot):

And now let’s look at the all-important Content Types.

Content Types

Content Type is a special kind of meta field. That’s all. UCM puts a special emphasis on it as this is the value that differentiates a project plan from a web page and a team photo from a vendor invoice.

You may even choose to change the way your check-in and content info form looks —based on the type of the document.

Let’s look how UCM handles Content Types.

Lab 3: Exploring content types

In Content Server go to Administration | Admin Applets.

Launch the Configuration Manager.

Select Options| Content Types… (as shown in the following screenshot):

The Content Types dialog opens. As you see, out of the box, Content Server has seven types—one for each imaginary department. This is a good way of segregating content. You can also go by the actual type of content. For instance, you can have one Content Type for Invoice and one for Project Plan.

They will also have different meta fields. For instance, an Invoice will have a Contract Number and a Total Amount. A Project Plan will have a project name and manager’s name. Now let me show you how to add content types.

How to add a Content Type

It’s easy to add a new Content Type. Just click on Add…, fill in the type name and the description. You can also select an icon for the new type.

What if you need to upload a new icon? Just make it into an 8-bit GIF file, 30×37 px, 96 dpi and upload it to:

C:oracleucmserverweblayoutimagesdocgifs

If your install path is different or you’re not running on Windows then make appropriate corrections.

How to edit or delete a Content Type

The only thing to know about editing is that you can not really change the type name. All you can update is the icon or description.

If you’re ready to delete a type then make sure there is no content in the repository that’s using it. Either update it all or delete.

How would you go about doing a mass-update? I’ll show you one of the ways in on using Archiver(Ways on archiever is out of the scope of this article).

And now let’s proceed to Custom Metadata.

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