Installation

System supplied on CD ROM with installation instructions.

Allow 1 day for installation.  SQL Server skills required

No installation required for document contributors

Documentation available online

Upgrade

Software upgrades supplied on CD ROM but usually upgraded by Square Solutions online using VPN

SQL Server system admin skills required.

Quarterly System Release

Documentation

Visitors

There is no requirement for visitors documentation

Authors

Simple 6 page authors’ guide. 

Full 100 page reference manual

Administrator

Backed by online documentation base

Installer

Getting Started Guide

Developer

Database schema documentation

Module inventory.

Internal code documentation

Online documentation

Training

Authors/Editors

Half day basic skills

Half day advanced topics

Usually undertaken to train in-house trainer

Administrator

One day training.

Template design

Half day training

Software integration with other systems

One day training

Support

Fully maintainable remotely using VPN

Online fault reporting and tracking by Square Solutions

Backups can be run without stopping the system

Hosting

External Hosting

Can be hosted on dedicated server in remote hosting environment with VPN management

Internal Hosting (preferred)

Requires IIS 6+

Windows 2003 advanced server+

SQL server 2000+

Network connection

Firewall inc VPN

Some features will only be available with the .net platform (Windows 2003 and IIS6)

Performance

Clustering

Full server clustering for higher throughput and fault tolerance

Requires MS enterprise editions

Load sharing

3^rd party products can be used to share the web server load.

Not very fault tolerant

Shared SQL servers

A single SQL Server system can be shared amongst multiple web servers

Saves SQL licences

Multi CPU servers

Faster and/or multiple processors can be installed

May be expensive option for MS licences

Caching

COMS has a built in caching system so that content is not recreated from the database if it has not changed

Compression

COMS uses Gzip as specified in W3c RFC1952 to compress content sent back to browsers equipped to handle it (most common browsers support this compression although few content management systems can exploit it..

Can give tenfold increase in speed of transmission of HTML over the same network connection.

Database

System

SQL Server 2000 +.

Rollback

The database repository allows rollback of the site to an earlier version

Replication

SQL Server has tools to share database between servers using “publishing” technologies.

Configuration

Key COMS configuration tables are managed through system admin tool.

Backup

Can be backed up without stopping COMS system

Extension

The database provides many facilities to enable the connection of COMS to back office database applications

Content Engine

Document Storage

All documents (images, objects, text) stored in SQL Server database.

When the content of an article or a resource such a picture or object is changed, then all published information will automatically show the updated information next time it is browsed.

Contents and the templates are stored separately and securely in a relational database.

W3C conformance

Overall system conforms to HTML4.01 Transitional, optionally strict and XHTML1.0 can be configured.

Style Sheets meet W3C standard.

COMS automatically uses gzip compression with browsers which support content encoding (>95% comply with this) which reduces HTML size by over 80%.

COMS automatically cleans HTML on the fly to ensure maximum compliance.  Output can be HTML4.01 transitional, strict or xhtml. There are some 60 tuning options controlling the formatting of the delivered documents.

Cleaning is undertaken by a variant of the W3C recommended product Tidy.

RSS feeds conform to RSS2.0.

Accessibility

Subject to compliant templates, the web pages generated will satisfy the Disability Discrimination legislation currently in force and meet the W3C WAI accessibility standards.

A text only option for viewing of the site is inherent in the design of the system.  This is ideal for restricted screens or for those with visual impairments who use speech synthesis to read the pages.

Our text only generator meets Bobby requirements.

All content is corrected to HTML tidy standard prior to publishing.

Security

Users can be authenticated by a login sufficiently securely to allow for appropriate confidential material to be displayed to them.

Authors can password protect parts of the site, to work alongside a user logon system, to support different interest groups.

Blocks within a document can be marked as restricted to logged in interest group members (SR19).

Payments

The system supports online charging via Commidea and Secpay card payment systems

Standards

Your site can be checked for DTV functionality using the EMMY DTV browser emulator.

Editor tool has handy buttons for checking code and accessibility conformance of articles.

Templates

Control over the style of the templates, navigation of the site and other overarching functions are strictly limited to System Administrators.

All templates supplied meet WAI AAA standard.

Corporate Styles

The system re-formats content provided by users to ensure compliance with the corporate ‘look and feel’.  Style sheets are used wherever possible to achieve this result.

By using and enforcing templates, a consistent style can be developed for a site by Web designers while enabling authors, without this skill, to produce attractive and consistent content.

CSS

Full support for CSS in templates

All style sheets we supply meet W3C standards

WSYWYG editor can be configured to use CSS styles only

CSS can be switched, based on location on site

Remote Systems

The system can link to databases held in SQL Server, Access, and other ODBC compliant databases as required, for some dynamic site content, operational systems etc

Media

The system can store audio and video clips in its object library to be used when required.  All formats are supported including WAV, MPEG, MPG-3 etc 

The system can initiate streaming audio and video content using the standard streaming media servers.

Microsoft Media Server supports admin features together with monitoring, playlists and advertising. Integration with PowerPoint allows online presentations  Streaming format is ASF. Cameras/interface cards supporting Video for Windows or  WDM drivers can be used.  This includes products from ATI, Creative, Echo, M-Audio, Soundscape, Viewcast and Winnov.

Other streaming server software can be supplied providing MPEG-4 video encoding and DirectShow interfaces.  For high bandwidth streaming, Microsoft recommends using separate streaming servers.

The system can generate a ‘printer friendly’ Print option.

The system allows the end user to print any page.

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are maintained in a table for centralised management.

Hyperlinks can refer to external sites

Hyperlinks can open new target windows

Language context is maintained when jumping

Text only context is maintained when jumping

Graphics

When appropriate, a picture is held per language and it switches based on language context – suitable for maps and  text

Many transformations are available such as borders, brightness, skew, flip, zoom, rotate etc.

Images can be uploaded from the browser over Internet or LAN.

Images will be automatically resized into predefined normal and thumbnail versions.

The original uploaded version of the image is always retained and can be restored to its original condition at any time, undoing any editing.

Keywords are stored with images to form alt text in multiple languages.

Images can be searched for by keywords.

It is designed for users who are unfamiliar with handling images and dealing with file sizes and compression and automated and standardises these processes.

Pictures can be public or private to the person submitting the image.  The use of the image management toolset requires “image edit” permissions so that it can be centrally controlled, if necessary.

The relational integrity built into the data schema will ensure that an image cannot be deleted if it is referred to by any article.  Tools are provided to identify any images that are not used.

An author can add an image from the library to his article provided it is “publicly” available or is owned by him.  In general, picture sizes are controlled by templates but they can be overridden by a user if required. 

Not all graphical formats have been fully tested.

Objects

The following object types can be uploaded:

Unsafe object types can be barred from the object library during system customisation at installation time

Each object can exist with multiple language variants whose use will change depending on language context.

Objects can have keywords in multiple languages

Objects can be searched for by keyword metadata  and with full text indexing of the content.

Objects can be related to articles with relationships selected from a vocabulary.

Contact Data

A full set of contact data can be stored with each article

Metadata

Full support for Dublin core in COMS content

Full support for UK-EGMS in COMS content

Full support for APLAWS metadata scheme in COMS content

Client can add any schema independent metadata to article types

Metadata can be used in content output

The product meets the UK e-GIF interoperability standards as at April 2003 and will continue to track developments in this area. Current XML vocabularies will be supplied and COMS includes the necessary tools to maintain the vocabularies

Forms

A simple to use forms system is provided that allows for the creation and presentation of screen based forms for consultation purposes or for email or to be placed in a database table.  The built in forms capability allows posting to an on-line database, with response to end user that database has been updated

Customised actions can be triggered by response forms to drive the internal workflow system or interface to external workflow products.

The system is fully compatible with Mandoforms or Adobe Forms for a more sophisticated interactive forms capability.

Language Support

COMS is fully bilingual with the option to enforce dual language publishing. A description of the Welsh language operation is in the Appendix.

Other (left to right) languages can easily be added

Page generation

The layout of the screen is controlled as follows:

A top level template divides up the screen into navigation and content areas.

Style sheets are used to set the visual theme to each area of the site and to define the graphics.

Document templates are used to place fixed information on the screen, to retrieve information from the document database and format it and place it on the screen..

Different document templates are used for each type of article.

When a template is changed, its effects are immediate.

Navigation of the web site uses a multi-level menu system that does not use any client scripts to ensure maximum compatibility with browsers operating to a high level of security.

Java menu options can be plugged in if required for higher levels of interactivity.

Publishing of time sensitive information such as news and jobs can be automated and rotated on the screen via a template service.  Once a news item is authorised, it will automatically be placed on the designated news boards on the site.

Links between documents are maintained though relational tables ensuring rigorous control of the integrity of the site.  External links can also be controlled in this manner enabling efficient redirection without editing of articles as circumstances change.

The system allows auto creation of site map.

Optional Applications

Payments System

Account payment with online card payments

Forum and Voting

Discussion forums, FAQ management and voting

Online Shop

Product sales and optional card payments

Facilities Booking

Room equipment and facilities booking

Appointments Diary

Public booking of appointments with shared diaries.

Events management

Management of repeating events.

Hotel Booking

Online booking – numerous options including tools for use in small hotels and B&Bs