NXT 4 Terminology

Access Control

The process of managing who can enter an NXT 4 site and what content they may access once inside that site. Access control properties define what the user can see, navigate, or change, and other kinds of information. Access control is comprised of three operations:

Access Control Module

The NXT 4 access control module's function is to challenge potential users for their credentials and then query a data storage device to verify the credentials. Along with checking credentials, the access control module retrieves a user's access control properties that define what the user can navigate (through the table of contents), query, view, and edit. Once the access control properties are obtained, they are used for the current request and any subsequent requests the user makes.

You can configure NXT 4 with one of two access control modules:

Authentication

The process of verifying the credentials of a user or user agent. Credentials can be a user name and password, a digital certificate, or a number of other less common mechanisms.

Authentication information typically resides in an enterprise system such as an LDAP directory service, a relational database, or perhaps an operating system based directory such as Windows® NT Domains.

The Access Control Module can either perform the authentication by obtaining the user's credentials from one of these services, or it can simply pass the credentials to another system that performs the authentication and returns a response.

Authorization

The process of granting users access to site elements, such as documents, operations, and services. Access to an element at a given level (node) also allows access to all elements that are children of that element (as long as the domain is set for the parent node and not the children individually).

Authorization also includes the application of a set of access control properties for a user. The standard set is view content, view metadata, navigate, query, element (Word Wheel), author, and editor. These roles define the types of access that are allowed for a given user. These are specific to the components that implement them, so the writer of a new component implementing a certain kind of interface can define roles suitable for that function.

Specifications for user IDs and roles are contained in an external directory, such as an LDAP or relational database server. Each NXT 4 system component and service is responsible for enforcing the access control rules. The access control module merely provides information when requested. For example, if a relational database is defined as a content collection on a server, it is represented as a node in the table of contents. Access to the database is allowed by putting its node ID in the content domain specified for the user who you want to give access rights to.

Build

The process that creates the search and navigation information for specific content. For content collections, a build also includes the content. For a content network link, the build happens to the content on the content host, and not on the server creating the link.

Search and navigation information may become obsolete as the content changes so the Content Network Manager allows you to schedule if and how often a build takes place.

Circuit Link

See recursive link.

Content

Documents, databases, applications, and other digital media. The word content does not by itself refer to any particular unit of content, but can be paired with other terms to describe units of content, such as content collections.

Content Broker

Refers to the local side of a link. If company X links to company Y, company X is the content broker and company Y is the content server (content host). Content brokers receive information from servers to which they are linked.

When linking with the Content Network Adapter within NXT 4, server and broker are modes in which the NXT 4 server operates. An NXT 4 server can function both as broker and as server in content network link exchanges.

Content Collection

Typically, a collection of one or more documents. In NXT 4, you can also create an empty content collection in Content Network Manager for the purpose of letting users add their own content later. Content collections can contain any type of document, as well as considerable internal folder structure. NXT 4 indexes the following types of documents within a content collection: HTML, XML, plain text, Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Powerpoint, Corel WordPerfect, ODT.

Content Host

See content server.

Content Management

The large body of content that resides on a site typically comes from different sources. Much content comes from external sources in a finished form, but other content is internally generated and continuously updated. Managing dynamic content requires a system that does the following:

Documents can be created or modified with an editor, word processor, or some other application. Users can submit documents to the site, specify location in the content hierarchy, and specify document metadata such as author, title, and abstract. A user can also modify an existing document and document metadata. During modification, the user checks out and locks the document, which prevents other users from checking out the document. You cannot edit the properties for content or download the content until the file is checked in.

Content Network Adapter

Retrieves remote content and allows NXT 4 Servers to communicate with each other (typically through the use of a content network link).

Additional, third party, content network adapters may also be installed and used.

Content Network Link

Refers to a site node that defines a connection between a client (content broker) and a server (content server). You can link to any site that is running LivePublish 2.0.3 or later, or NXT 4, providing that the site allows syndication rights.

These content network links use a Content Network Adapter, a system that allows NXT 4 servers to interconnect, functioning both as server and as client.

note icon When creating Content Network Links, avoid circuits (also known as circular or recursive links) where Server A points to Server B, Server B points back to Server A.

Content Server

In general, any web server that provides content to users through a web browser is a content server. For NXT 4, it is also the server that provides content for another server, through the use of a content network link.

Content Type

NXT 4 can index many content types. NXT 4 can serve any type of content to a site; however, how and if the content is displayed depends on the web browser's configuration.

NXT 4 indexes the following file formats:

Content (Mime) Type File Type File Format
text/plain Text .txt
text/html HTML .htm or .html
text/xml XML .xml
application/pdf Adobe Acrobat® Portable Document Format (PDF) .pdf
application/msword Microsoft Word .doc
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Microsoft Office Word 2007 document .docx
application/ms-excel Microsoft Excel .xls
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Microsoft Office Excel 2007 workbook .xlsx
application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12 Office Excel 2007 macro-enabled workbook .xlsm
application/mspowerpoint Microsoft Powerpoint .ppt
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 presentation .pptx
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text OpenDocument Text .odt

However, as a result of installing other software packages, your system may have a different version of offilt.dll, the system DLL that NXT 4 uses to index Microsoft Office files.


Note: To index ODT documents, you must install the corresponding version of OpenOffice IFilters that is included in the Apache OpenOffice 4.0 and higher, or similar software (for example, LibreOffice 4.3 and higher). You can download and install the required software manually from the official site.


Display Filter

A module used by the document component to process documents before sending them to the browser. The XML display filter in NXT 4 performs a server-side conversion from XML to HTML for non-XML compatible Web browsers. Several display filters are installed with NXT 4. Custom filters can be created by the Rocket Professional Services team.

Once a display filter exists, it must be added to a site through the Content Network Manager. The entry maps a content type to the display filter. When the document component serves any documents of that specified content type, it gives the display filter the opportunity to process the document before it is sent to the browser. The document component passes documents to a display filter after it replaces any replacement variables.

The display filters provided with NXT 4 do not support external resources, such as links to a DTD, external entities, etc. To support these functions, you would need to contact Rocket Professional Services.

Using a display filter is the only way to serve XML in a frameless HTML environment since the frameless templates place the document into an HTML page, and Microsoft Internet Explorer cannot switch gears in the middle of a page. The display filter also generates documents of content type "application/x-html-body-text" instead of "text/html" for the frameless environment (see content type for more information).

Document

The NXT 4 unit of display. A document is a textual data stream that is either authored or dynamically constructed. A document corresponds to a single page viewed in a Web browser.

A document can be of any format, including non-text formats, such as graphics. Supported text-like formats are indexed and fully searchable. A document can be indexed for searching if an index filter is registered for the specific document format.

Logically, a document represents a collection unit, such as a case, chapter, article, etc. At the lowest level a document is a piece of a larger work to be presented to a Web browser. It could be considered a page, without the usual restrictions of the printed page.

Because an NXT 4 site is composed of content collections, so a content collection is composed of multiple documents. When you view information in NXT 4, you view it one document at a time. The result of a search in NXT 4 is a list of matches that are linked to corresponding documents.

This is similar to the way most Web-based information retrieval tools work. However, where other tools stop at the document level, an NXT 4 content collection allows you to view and search sub-document components.

Document Properties

Site nodes in NXT 4 can be associated with their own document properties. Document properties include the following: Template Path, Image Path, and Stylesheet Path.

For a site, the properties are required, and must be provided as a full path.

For a view, the properties are optional, and must be provided as a relative path from the properties provided for the site.

Document Element Properties

A document stored in a content collection has a set of properties.

NXT 4 supports these document element properties:

The version property is specified by the DSE. All other properties are specified in the makefile.

Document Source Extension (DSE)

A module (DLL) that ccBuild uses to retrieve documents to store in a content collection. The DSE determines how the document's location must be specified in the makefile. The content type specified for a document determines whether the document is indexed. NXT 4 ships with the File System DSE.

The File System DSE reads a document from the computer's hard disk and stores it in a content collection in its native format. You must use file paths to specify the locations of the files that you use this DSE to store.

Domain

Defines a subset of a site's contents. This subset is defined by nodes, including folders, content collections, content services, and content network links. A domain is a list of nodes in the content hierarchy as presented by the server. Domains are used in views, access control, and search.

In the NXT 4 security model, access can be through a view, a user-based access domain, or a combination of both.

User-based domain access provides additional flexibility over view-based access. Each user can have access to different parts of an NXT 4 site without having to create a special view for each user. Initially, NXT 4 checks the identity of the user making a request for content and can grant the user anonymous rights, or can require the user to log into the system. Once these rights are established, the user is free to use those resources to which access has been granted.

Subsequent requests might require the user to give different credentials to gain access. If the user makes such a request, then NXT 4 issues a challenge to the user to retrieve the information required to change the user's rights. This challenge might be a request for different credentials or it might be a request for the user to furnish a credit card number to pay for the access.

Domain Properties

Describes where the user can go, what the user can see, and what the user can query on. The Access Control module converts domain properties from document ID lists to domain string syntax.

Effective Attribute

It is common for a user object to inherit attributes from either container or group objects. Such attributes are called "effective" because an object gains the attributes from reading other objects associated with the original objects. Effective attributes are resolved by one of two algorithms, additive and exclusive.

By default, effective attributes use the exclusive algorithm, which means that the first attribute that is found becomes the effective attribute. An example of such an attribute is np-remote-access.

Attributes like the np-view-domain are additive, which means that the effective attribute value is a union of all the values of all the objects evaluated. You can have one np-view-domain value on one object and a different value on a related object. The value of the effective attribute is the value from both objects. Additive attributes are specified by listing them in the configuration file.

Encoding

Converting from one text system into another. Encoding of content is the conversion of plain text into encoded data through the use of a code.

The result of this is to change the text's form into another form that is more advantageous for transmission, storage, or reading. NXT 4 makes use of the Unicode standard to capitalize on these advantages for a broad range of languages and character encodings.

NXT 4 supports 87 encoding formats, including documents that are encoded in any of the following character encodings:

To see the complete list of supported encoding formats, see the [encoders] section in the Publish.ini file.

Field

A text string that is assigned semantic meaning based on its data type. It is indexed separately for efficiency. An explicitly searchable part of a document that can have type attributes associated with it (like date, time, integer, etc.).

Folder

Element used to establish the hierarchy of a site. NXT 4 site folders, created using the Content Network Manager, may contain content collections and other folders.

On a general level, a folder is any node that contains children nodes. In this sense, folders merely represent a hierarchy and allow for easier site navigation. These types of folders may (or may not) have content associated with them that would display when the folder title is selected in the table of contents.

Hit

See match.

Hitlist

See Search Results List.

ID

A unique alphanumeric string that identifies a given site, folder, content collection, view, or search form. The ID can be any sequence of numbers and characters, but cannot contain semicolons. The ID field for a content collection is read-only, and established at creation or build time. NXT 4 uses content collection IDs to resolve URLs that request documents by ID.

An ID must be unique among all other IDs on a NXT 4 site, and all site node IDs on a single server must be unique. But, node IDs between different sites on the same NXT 4 Server do not need to be unique.

If you enter an ID that is already in use, NXT 4 informs you that that ID is already in use and that you need to enter a different ID. NXT 4 uses the ID differently depending on the node type. Access control is a common usage of the ID value in designating users content access rights.

This property is required.

Impersonation

The process of changing one user's access control properties to another user's access control properties. The Allow-Impersonation access control property determines which users are allowed to change their access control user properties to those of another user.

note icon The Access Control Modules supplied with NXT 4 do not allow the Anonymous user to be impersonated.

Impersonation is most appropriate in the context of a content network that assumes a trusted relationship exists between the integrator server and the content server. It is further assumed that across the entire content network all user names are unique.

Index

The complex set of data structures that support search, navigation, and recommendations. These content types correspond to the following file formats that NXT 4 indexes:

Content (Mime) Type File Type File Format
text/plain Text .txt
text/html HTML .htm or .html
text/xml XML .xml
application/pdf Adobe Acrobat® Portable Document Format (PDF) .pdf
application/msword Microsoft Word .doc
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Microsoft Office Word 2007 document .docx
application/ms-excel Microsoft Excel .xls
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Microsoft Office Excel 2007 workbook .xlsx
application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12 Office Excel 2007 macro-enabled workbook .xlsm
application/mspowerpoint Microsoft Powerpoint .ppt
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 presentation .pptx

However, as a result of installing other software packages, your system may have a different version of offilt.dll, the system DLL that NXT 4 uses to index Microsoft Office files.

Index Sheet

A stylesheet for indexing. It is a rule-based system modeled after Extensible Style Language (XSL). Index sheets typically use the .XIL extension: HTML.XIL is the default index sheet for HTML documents; XML.XIL is the default index sheet for XML documents; and metadata.XIL is the default index sheet for metadata files. Among other benefits, index sheets allow you to put your HTML sub-document hierarchy into the NXT 4 table of contents.

Makefile

An XML file that provides instructions to the ccBuild utility on how to build a content collection. The makefile defines the structure and ordering of the content collection's content, as well as instructions on displaying or hiding documents in the table of contents view of the content collection.

A makefile describes several things that ccBuild needs to build or update a single content collection. Each of these items corresponds to a construct in the makefile syntax:

The makefile must conform to the content collection makefile DTD and be UTF-8 encoded. UTF-8 encoding is assumed and does not need to be specified in the makefile.

Language

Specifies the language for the site to use when processing queries and returning query results. Possible values are:

EN-US for US English
FR-FR for French
PT-BR for Portugese
ES-ES for Spanish
NL-NL for Dutch
DE-DE for German
JA-JA for Japanese

Language Module

Designates the language module for NXT to use for parsing and indexing a content collection. The following options are available:

Language Language Module
English (UK) NextPage UK English Server Extension Module. Version 2.01
English (US) NextPage US English Server Extension Module. Version 2.01
Spanish Modulo de NextPage para el idioma espanol. Version 2.01
French Module NextPage de gestion de la langue francaise. Version 2.01
Canadian French Module NextPage de gestion de la langue francaise(Canada). Version 2.01
Dutch NextPage Nederlandse taalmodule. Versie 2.0
Portuguese Modulo do NextPage em portugues. Versao 2.01
German NextPage-Sprachmodul Deutsch. Version 2.01

Match

Terms or documents found by a search.

NXT 4 highlights term matches in PDF, XML, plain text, and HTML formatted documents. The NXT 4 toolbar provides tools for moving between matches.

Metadata

Data about data. A set of properties describing a document: such as author, title, and creation date. Rocket recommends using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) for metadata. The metadata used by NXT 4 is specific metadata used for searching or resource discovery.

Metadata support allows the defining, creating, storing, indexing, searching, retrieving, etc. of metadata. Metadata can exist within the resource that it is describing (internal metadata), or it can exist in a separate file (external metadata) that is associated with the content file.

By default, NXT uses the Dublin Core rules as a foundation for processing external metadata, as in Manage Content.

Metering

Metering is the process of refining a user's authorization based on usage-based criteria (meters), such as the number of pages viewed, user concurrency, or resource usage. Metering allows you to limit access based on rules other than access lists. The default request types supporting metering are document requests and query requests.

The access control module can track what the user does at the site and generate a statistical analysis. If desired, the access control module can also perform such metering functions as keeping track of how many documents a user retrieves, what documents the user retrieves, what queries the user makes, what resources the user uses on the server, etc.

note icon Metering is available within NXT 4, but requires customized enhancements available only through Rocket Professional Services. You can reach a consulting representative by calling 1-801-208-2300, or by sending an email to proserv@rocketsoftware.com

MIME Type

See content type.

Name

Name associated with a site, folder, content network link, content collection, content service, view, or search form.

Folder, link, content services, and content collection names are part of URLs that reference other servers or documents stored in content collections. Therefore, a node's name must be unique within the same node or hierarchy level (sibling nodes), but parent or child nodes can have the same name, although not recommended. For example, a URL that references a content collection includes the name of the folder path (in other words, all parent folders)in which the content collection is located, as well as the content collection name itself. For example, <folder name>/<folder name>/<content collection name>.

This is a required property.

Since URLs in NXT 4 consist of name values, these name values should be as short as possible to reduce the length of URLs, and contain only valid characters. The following table lists the valid and invalid name value characters:

Node

Within an NXT 4 site, a node is anything that is displayed in the table of contents, such as documents, folders, content collections, etc.

In general, a node is a point at which subsidiary parts originate or center. In a tree, or hierarchical, structure, a node represents a point from which branches originate. All branches that originate within the same node are children of the node and siblings to each other. Consequently, each node has a parent (except the topmost one) , may have zero or more siblings, and may have zero or more children.

Recursive Link

A link where Server A points to Server B and Server B points back to Server A (also known as circular links). Although safeguards are in place, recursive Content Network Links can still create delays, or require reloading the table of contents.

Rocket suggests a simple rule to help you avoid recursive links: if a server is going to define links and be linked to from another server, then the view that will be linked to should not contain any links.

The best practice is to design a specific user that will be used by others when they define a link to your server. The user is given syndication rights, and the default view is removed from this user's list of valid domains.

Create a new view for this user, and restrict the domain of this view. Specifically, remove links on this server to other servers. These links must be removed from the view domain if the possibility exists that some child node may point back.

If no child node will ever point back, then include the links to other machines; that is what makes the content network rich and useful. Other machines can and should define links to machines that have links, but avoid recursive links for maximum site performance.

Remote Server

A server that is not being accessed directly through physical contact.

When administering NXT 4 Servers, you can administer a local server (the machine you are currently using) or a remote server (a server in another location). To administer a remote server you must have access rights to the server and you will need to provide a valid user name and password.

Remote servers are not the same as servers that you declare when creating a content network link. Technically, content network links point to remote servers, but when you create or access a content network link, you are not administering how NXT 4 runs on that remote server; you are only pointing to or accessing content.

Reserved Character

Phrases containing these characters must be enclosed in single quotes if it occurs in a field.

The following are reserved characters:

[

left square bracket

]

right square bracket

*

asterisk

/

forward slash

$

dollar sign

&

ampersand

^

up arrow

:

colon

?

question mark

'

single quote

%

percent sign

|

bar

~

tilde

#

pound sign

Resource Description Framework (RDF)

A World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) initiative, building upon earlier developments such as the Dublin Core and the Platform for Internet Content Selectivity (PICS) content rating initiative.

NXT 4 uses RDF as a default foundation for processing external metadata, with Dublin Core property definitions. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/resources/dc/datamodel/WD-dc-rdf/ for details. You may implement alternative forms of external metadata, as long as these files follow XML specifications, and as long as you develop the appropriate index sheets.

When you use Manage Content to assign metadata to a file, NXT 4 places this metadata in an associated RDF file. If you are building a content collection, then you can use the makefile to associate RDF files (or other metadata file types) with documents within the content collection.

RDF provides a syntax for encoding and transporting this metadata, to facilitate interoperability ( that is, exchange of machine-understandable information) between independently-developed server and client applications. RDF has a broad range of benefits and uses; NXT 4 capitalizes on the following aspects of RDF:

Search Form

An HTML form that specifies the text and field values to search for, as well as the scope (subset of the content) to apply the search to. It is implemented in NXT 4 through a template. Search forms may use JavaScript to construct a query to apply to the site.

The templates installed with NXT 4 include an "advanced query form" that allows the user to select branches of the table of contents to query and to select query options such as words around matches.

Search Results List

List of matches found by a search. A Search Results List can contain fields, reference line, ranking, and words around matches. A search template specifies what information to include in a search results list.

Selecting a match from a search results list displays the corresponding document in the document frame.

Site

Collection of content that is hosted by the NXT 4 Server. The site can be organized hierarchically using folders and content collection structures. A site may contain content collections; content services; content network links; search templates; display templates; and site, folder, and content collection properties. The definition of an NXT 4 site is stored in an XML file (the site definition file). You may modify the definition of a site using the NXT 4 Content Network Manager application.

NXT 4 is designed around a site model. When users access an NXT 4 site, they are presented with a site table of contents that allows them to browse the content collections stored on the site. They may also search across all content collections or a subset of the content collections.

As an NXT 4 site administrator, you can control the organization of your site and what content to display. Others may provide content for you, but you determine how the content is integrated with your site. Typically, related items are gathered into collections or sub-collections to keep themes together.

Site Definition File (SDF)

Specifies the sites for an NXT 4 Server, as well as the content collections that are hosted on a site. You can use folders to organize the content collections into hierarchies. The site definition file also includes search forms available for use.

The SDF is an XML file that is used to store information regarding an NXT 4 site. Each NXT 4 Server has one SDF for each site. The name of the SDF for the default site is Publish.sdf. If you create additional SDFs, the name can be any valid file name with the .sdf extension.

The preferred method for editing the SDF is to make changes through Content Network Manager. The SDF can also be edited using a text editor or XML editor. If you make changes in the SDF without using Content Network Manager, you must stop and start the World Wide Web Publishing Service for the changes to be recognized. Changes made through Content Network Manager are updated on the site when you select "Apply All Changes" (you do not need to stop and start the WWW Publishing Service).

Stop Word

Common word, such as the, it, is, and a, which generally does not add any value to a search. The creator of a content collection can specify whether the index for the content collection leaves stop words out of the index. This reduces the size of the content collection by not allowing matches on these stop words for phrase or proximity searches.

note icon They can be searched for and found in any other context.

The stop words used in the English-US version of NXT 4 are:

a about after all an and are as bet but by can for from had has have
he his I if in is it its no not of on or out said than that
the their they this to up was we were when which who will with would    

Stylesheet

Master page layout document that is often used in document creation systems such as word processing and Web pages. It typically stores margins, fonts, and other layout settings for a set of documents. When a stylesheet is used, the formatting is applied to the document that references it. This can save the page designer from having to redefine the same settings for each page.

NXT 4 can make use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and XML stylesheets (XSL) for the formatting and display of content.

Syndication

Technology that allows servers to be linked together in a content network.

When used with security, syndication rights represent whether a user is able to make requests to a content server.

Table of Contents

NXT 4 provides both HTML and Java applet versions of a table of contents for browsing site and content collection hierarchy. Clicking any underlined table of contents item displays the corresponding document in the document frame.

The makefile can specify the hierarchical arrangement (or tree) of documents within a content collection, which shows up in the table of contents. By default, each document corresponds to an entry in the table of contents. Optionally, you can specify that a document not appear in the table of contents. Documents can also contain a sub-document hierarchy that is reflected in the table of contents. A document may or may not have content associated with it, and can have zero or more child documents (which would make it seem to be a folder).

Template

File containing HTML and Javascript that references components to dynamically construct a presentation interface. Templates are used by NXT 4 to display content collection contents, search forms, and configuration screens in a Web browser. Templates typically contain special HTML comment tags (Replacement Variables) that NXT 4 replaces with content collection content or server values before sending the template file to the browser.

Title

Title values appear in NXT 4 tables of contents for the associated site, content network link, folder, content service, content collection, or library. Titles of search forms and views contain the text that is displayed in drop-down boxes that allow the user to choose between search forms or views.

The title has no uniqueness requirements. The title should be descriptive enough for readability but not so long that it becomes hard to read in the table of contents.

This is not a required property. If a node does not have a title value, NXT 4 will use the node's name value as the title until you provide a title.

Tree

Hierarchical structure of a Web site. The table of contents for NXT 4 shows this structure. A tree can have branches (sometimes referred to as nodes), parent nodes, and children nodes.

View

A view is a resource for managing display of data and access to that data. A view can include either the whole or a subset of a site's table of contents, and can also include a set of templates that provide the interface for the view. Each view can contain folders, content collections, and content services. A view manages the display of the content for a site, as well as access to that content.

Each view may use different templates to provide a customized appearance for the view. Each view can be given a unique interface by specifying non-default template and image directories for the view. In addition, each view can specify the language of the query components to use when searching the view.

A site may include multiple views, each providing access to different portions of the site and using different templates.

You define a view by using Content Network Manager to create a view element which specifies the view's ID, templates path, domain, highlight style, and the language for the view. The parent element of the view is considered the root element of the view. The view's domain attribute specifies which descendants of the root node are visible in the view.

In the NXT 4 security model, access can be through a view, a user-based access domain, or a combination of both.