Retrieving Documents with Content Selectors


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You can enrich a visitor's experience on your Web site by providing information that matches the visitor's interests or expectations. Using content selectors, you can specify conditions under which WebLogic Personalization Server retrieves one or more documents from your content management system. For example, you can use a content selector to encapsulate the following conditions: between May 1 and May 10, if a customer in the SailingEnthusiast customer segment views this page, find and retrieve any documents that describe sailing along the Maine coast.

A document is a graphic, a segment of HTML, or a file that must be viewed with a browser plug-in. We recommend that you store most of your Web site's dynamic documents in a content management system because it offers an effective way to store and manage information.

A Business Analyst (BA) uses the BEA E-Business Control Center to define the conditions that activate a content selector and to define the query the content selector uses to find and retrieve documents. Then, a Commerce Business Engineer (CBE) uses content selector JSP tags and a set of other JSP tags that display the content in JSPs.

This topic includes the following sections:

What Are Content Selectors?

Content selectors specify conditions under which they query the content management system for documents. They consist of the following elements:

A set of conditions that determine when the content selector queries the content management system. The conditions can use the profile of the customer who is currently viewing a JSP page, an event that occurs on the page or has occurred previously on some other page, or the current time. For a complete list of conditions, refer to Listing of the Available Conditions.
BAs create and modify the set of conditions in the E-Business Control Center.
A query that searches the content management system for one or more documents.
BAs create and modify the query in the E-Business Control Center.
A JSP tag that triggers the content selector to evaluate its conditions.

To display the documents that the query finds, a CBE must use an additional set of tags. For information about using content-selector tags and other tags that display the query results, refer to "Working with Content Selectors" in Guide to Building Personalized Applications, which is located at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13210_01/wlcs/docs35/p13ndev/cs4cbe.htm.

Describing Documents in Your Content Management System

The queries that you define for content selectors search through the descriptions (attributes) that you attach to the documents in your content management system. WebLogic Personalization Server places no restrictions on the set of attributes that you use to describe your documents. For example, you can create attributes that describe a document's author, creation date, and subject. When you define a query, the E-Business Control Center presents all of the attributes that your content management currently contains.

We recommend that you analyze your overall personalization strategy and create attributes that you can use across customer segments. The more your attributes apply to multiple customer segments, the less often you need to create new attributes.

For information on creating attributes, refer to the documentation for your content management system. To learn more about using a content management system with WebLogic Personalization Server, refer to "Creating and Managing Content" in Guide to Building Personalized Applications, which is located at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13210_01/wlcs/docs35/p13ndev/content.htm.

Defining Content Selectors

To define a content selector, you need the following information:

A unique name for the content selector. A CBE uses JSP tags that refer to this name. The Explorer window in the E-Business Control Center lists the names of all content selectors in your data repository.
The conditions that activate the content selector to search for documents. For a description of the conditions that you can use, refer to Listing of the Available Conditions.
The attributes that you use to describe the documents in your content management system.

To Define a Content Selector

Start E-Business Control Center and connect to WebLogic Commerce Server and WebLogic Personalization Server. For information about connecting to a server, see Connecting the BEA E-Business Control Center to a Server.
To see a list of existing content selectors, do the following:
1. From the E-Business Control Center menu, select Window —> Open Explorer.
2. In the Explorer window, click Content Selectors.
  The E-Business Control Center displays a list of all content selectors in your data repository. (See Figure 5-1.)
  
  Figure 5-1 Content Selectors in the Explorer Window
From the E-Business Control Center menu, select File —> New —> Content Selector.
E-Business Control Center displays the Content Selector Editor.
In the Content Selector Editor, in the Name box, enter a name. The content selector JSP tags that CBEs use refer to this name.
In the Description box, document the intended use of this content selector. The description only displays in the Content Selector Editor. (See Figure 5-2.)
Figure 5-2 The Content Selector Editor
To create one or more conditions that activate this content selector, click Create/Edit. For a description of the conditions that you can use to trigger a content selector, refer to Listing of the Available Conditions.
For information on creating conditions, refer to Using the Select Customer Segments Window.
To create a query for the content selector, click the [empty content search] hypertext link under Action in the Content Selector window. (See Figure 5-3.)
For information about creating queries, refer to Constructing Queries.
Figure 5-3 Create a Query
In the Content Selector Editor, click Save. (See Figure 5-4.)
Figure 5-4 Saving the New Content Selector