What exactly does cm:select ... select from?

Question

Hello,
I have just started playing around with personalization server and I am having
a really simple problem.
I am using the <cm:select query="..." /> tag and I can never get it to return
any results. The variable that it returns is always an array of length 0.
By the examples in the documentation (i.e. the news example:
<cm:select query="type = 'news'"
sortBy="heading ASC, title ASC"
id="headlines" max="25" cacheId="WLCS_news_index_headlines"
cacheTimeout="300000" useCache="true" cacheScope="application" />
it implies that the select searches the WLCS_DOCUMENT_METADATA table right right?
i.e. the query type = 'news' is essentially (WLCS_DOCUMENT_METADATA.NAME = 'type'
AND WLCS_DOCUMENT_METADATA.VALUE = 'news')? or am i waaaaaaaaay off on understanding
how this tag works?
Thanks,
Will

Answer 1

Will -
Sorry about the delay in answering.
http://edocs.bea.com/wlp/docs40/p13ndev/content.htm#1055787 lists the
standard ("explicit") attribute names that the queries can contain. However,
it is not documented anywhere how those map to the DOCUMENT table in the
reference implementation, although I think you won't have any problem
figuring it out when you see the list of attribute names.
Greg
"Will Young" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
Hi Gregory,
Thanks a lot for your response. I figured out what my problem was(weblogic instance
was pointing to the wrong schema). duh!
Your point in your email to select everything from the DB by usingidentifier
like '*' is what tipped me off. One question though...where is itdocumented
that using the word 'identifier' selects on the ID column? I didn't seeit in
any of the <cm: tag documentation. I was wondering if there are any otherthings
like this that I should know to make my life easier.
Thanks,
Will
"Gregory Smith" <[email protected]> wrote:
Will -
You're pretty close. In 3.5, if you don't specify a contentHome in the
<cm:select>, it uses the default JNDI name, which is
com.beasys.commerce.axiom.document.DocumentManager (if you do specify
a
contentHome, it will use the JNDI name instead). Out-of-the-box, this
will
be the DocumentManager stateless session EJB deployed from document.jar,
which is configured
(http://e-docs/wlcs/docs35/p13ndev/content.htm#1028939)
to use the reference document management implemenation (via the docPool),
which should, as you determined, look in the WLCS_DOCUMENT and
WLCS_DOCUMENT_METADATA tables as you described.
So, why aren't you getting anything back. Here's some possibilities:
- Some sort of runtime error in the tag. Try setting failOnError="true"
in
the <cm:select>; this will cause it to throw a JSPTagException if an
error
occurs, instead of returning an empty array. You will probably need to
unwrap the JSPTagException (getRootCause()) to see the actual error(either
in a try/catch or with a JSP error page), since WLS tends to generate
useful
error messages like "Runtime error in tag".
- No matching content in the database. In 3.5, if you're using the
Cloudscape DB that ships with the product, there should be documents
loaded
that match type='news'. However, in 3.5, if you switched to Oracle or
one of
the other databases, there wouldn't be -- run bin/win32/loaddocs.bat
or
bin/unix/loaddocs.sh. In 4.0, there is no sample data shipped that would
match type='news' (we removed the example portlet that was using those
documents in 3.5). You can also work backwards by looking in dmsBase/
for
properties in *.md.properties or <META> tags in HTML file, and creating
queries from that. Or, you could change the query to something that will
return everything (e.g. identifier like '*') just to make sure you have
anything loaded in the database.
By the way, it's a little different (but basically the same) in 4.0 --
if
you don't specify a contentHome in the <cm:select>, it uses the default
JNDI
name, which is java:comp/env/ejb/ContentManager, which is an EJBreference
in your web.xml/weblogic.xml (see
http://edocs.bea.com/wlp/docs40/p13ndev/content.htm#1062679 for details
about what you have to do in your webapp for the cm stuff to work). This
EJB
reference should point to an instance of a ContentManager/DocumentManager
stateless session EJB. Out of the box (in the p13n webapp, for example),
this is the the DocumentManager deployed from document.jar in theenterprise
application. This DocumentManager is configured
(http://edocs.bea.com/wlp/docs40/p13ndev/content.htm#1041123) to use
the
reference document management implementation (via theDocumentConnectionPool
entry in the META-INF/application-config.xml and/or through the WLS
console), which looks in the DOCUMENT and DOCUMENT_METADATA tables.
Also, if you want to pull data from somewhere else (i.e. a third-party
content management system, a custom implementation), this is possible
through WLPS Content Management Integration. You will need to contact
your
BEA sales representive for more information.
Hope that helps,
Greg
"Will" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
Hello,
I have just started playing around with personalization server andI am
having
a really simple problem.
I am using the <cm:select query="..." /> tag and I can never get itto
return
any results. The variable that it returns is always an array of length0.
By the examples in the documentation (i.e. the news example:
<cm:select query="type = 'news'"
sortBy="heading ASC, title ASC"
id="headlines" max="25" cacheId="WLCS_news_index_headlines"
cacheTimeout="300000" useCache="true"
cacheScope="application"
/>
it implies that the select searches the WLCS_DOCUMENT_METADATA tableright
right?
i.e. the query type = 'news' is essentially
(WLCS_DOCUMENT_METADATA.NAME
= 'type'
AND WLCS_DOCUMENT_METADATA.VALUE = 'news')? or am i waaaaaaaaay offon
understanding
how this tag works?
Thanks,
Will