CMSVNext and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - another braindump and a stroll through some blogs...

One of the pillars of Microsoft's new ECM (Enterprise Content Management Offering) is web content management, previously Microsoft had its own server product for it, Microsoft Content Management Server. At PDC05, Microsoft finally revealed some technical details about the next version of CMS - here's a list of the things I noticed:

CMSVNext is built on top of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - a name mentionned was Office Web Content Management Server. One of the main goals of this new architecture was to take away the divide between functionality in SharePoint and CMS since customers basically require both

The equivalent of a channel in MCMS2002 will be a WSS3.0 web - there will be a special type of document library for webpages called "Pages library". This library will contain a page layout column which will contain the URL to the template. All the content will be stored in the fields in this page library. On a page request, a page will be assembled dynamically from the content in the different fields. You can use all the functionality of standard WSS libraries such as checkin, checkout, versioning,...

CMS Template = Page Layout column

CMS placeholder control = WSS field controls

CMSVNext will offer some extra WSS field controls e.g PublishingWebControls:AuthoringContainer with better support for table layout, server side spell checking, ...

A custom ASP.Net 2.0 navigation provider for CMSVNext, you just have to write your own navigation control and use the provider as a datasource

Membership providers to write your own authentication mechanisms

While MCMS2002 basically is a toolbox - it offered an API but you still had to write a lot of code. CMSVNext will offer more functionality out of the box and will require less custom code

Support for multilingual scenarios through a core website which will have multiple variations, with a certain replication mechanism built in... not a lot of details known about it yet

A migration tool for CMS2002 content will be provided, all the templates and custom code you will have to rewrite

Support for smart client authoring of webpages - extends on Document Conversion Services - this will allow you to plug in your own code to automatically generate webpages from different applications

Extra security added typically needed for CMS - e.g. a viewer role, which allows you to view pages but not to view the WSS UI (e.g. allitems.aspx), no remote API possible, no minor or historic versions visible

Define master pages on the level of the web - can be easily changed from within the SharePoint UI

Extra deployment options - OOB deployment through the UI

Better support for anonymous access

Extra caching options: ASP.Net caching, binary caching, use cache profiles,...

Can use the search of SharePoint

Built in summary pages available - Query by Content controls (e.g. all news postings), Summary links, TOC

Better OOB workflow through the same mechanism that WSS3.0 based on WWF - approval of webpages will be similar to approval of documents in document libraries.

Some interesting resources:

Web Content Management information from PDC (Braindump) - Angus Logan

MCMS v.Next - The curtain has been lifted at PDC - Stefan Gossner

Designing Your MCMS 2002 Solution for Reusability - Use best-practice design recommendations for Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 applications and Web sites to help you create your site in a way that prepares it for future versions of MCMS technology.

Posting from Arpan Shah about the confusion surrounding CMSVNext

OFF313 Web Content Management Application Development and Engine Extensibility - slide deck from PDC

[PDC05] What about MCMS? SharePoint, yes!

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