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"Open Source" & "Open Content"

One of the most exciting features of BetaCMS is the completely open and easily expandable content model that it supports. There are a lot of open source platforms for managing content but how "open"  - standards based, self describing, semantics driven, easily expandable and sharable - is their content model?

In contrast to many other tools and platforms BetaCMS does not impose a specific content model (e.g. modeling of web content). It does not stick to a specific content presentation metaphor (blog, forum, wiki, etc.) and does not favor a specific content domain (i.e. publishing, records management, etc.).

BetaCMS offers a small set of core concepts upon which anyone can easily and quickly build her own content constructs that fit the evolving organizational requirements. An organization can start with a small and simple content model that can be continuously updated and expanded to a complete knowledge  repository as the organization gains insight about its content assets.

Utilizing BetaCMS as a central content infrastructure, an organization does not have to continuously move to new tools or gather different database models as more content is collected and more semantic structure is gained. BetaCMS follows the idea of semi-structured content. When quick solutions are required and no time can be spent in modeling, unstructured or semi-structured content can be stored. Then more structure can be added as soon as it is needed.

The "open content model" combined with standardized methods and tools for defining and storing content protects the organization's  effort and investment in building its content assets and eliminates the need to continuously change tools and technologies as the content evolves.

Being the "owner" of your content and Building an Evolving Content Infrastructure / Repository are the major goals behind the way BetaCMS treats content and approaches content modeling.  BetaCMS seats transparently between standards for defining and storing content and eases the creation, retrieval, sharing, storing  and publishing of content.

Automatic two way mapping from "Model" to "Business Logic Objects" to "Content Storage"

For defining the content model BetaCMS uses XML Schemas (XSD), a standard, straightforward, technology neutral, high level  and powerful way to express the hierarchical structure of content. From the business analyst and information architect point of view the content is a set of XML documents having their grammar (the available tags) expressed with XML Schemas.

For storing the content the Java Content Repository (JCR)  standard is utilized. Each defined content element / type in the XML Schemas is automatically mapped to JCR Nodes and Properties. Just dropping the XML Schemas into BetaCMS results in automatic generation of content input forms and automatic storage of content into a JCR repository. There is an orthogonal approach for any type of stored value either textual, numeric or binary and full text search is available out of the box even for properties that store binary files.

And what about the developer?   BetaCMS is a content infrastructure platform putting a lot of emphasis in providing strong tools for building content applications and not just being a web application that stores content in a database.  In the middle way between XML Schemas that define the content and  JCR repositories that store it, BetaCMS automatically generates java objects which map the content model types and properties to java classes and class fields. A Java API (local and remote) allows the developer to search for content, and to retrieve, create, and store content as java objects. Additionally a RESTful API allows the retrieval of content as XML documents that follow the content grammar defined in the provided XML Schemas.

Having your content definition in XML Schemas, being able to search it, share it and export it as fully verified XML Documents in accordance to the defined Schemas, and getting all your content in standards based JCR Repositories guarantees the "ownership" and "accessibility" of your content assets. It establishes BetaCMS as a platform that eases the management of your content without locking you in specific technology implementations and custom made databases.

Check the subsections in the left bar menu to learn more about the core BetaCMS modeling concepts and the default XML Schemas which are provided out of the box (internal Schemas packaged inside the content engine module) to aid the bootstrap of your content model.