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696 WEBCONTENTMANAGEMENTthem from outside attacks (e.g., hackers, viruses) and to
prevent cyberthieves from stealing intellectual property
within corporate IT systems. However, these firewalls of-
fer only a limited line of defense because data and com-
munication must flow between the inside and outside of
the security line. As ports open for e-mails, Web, and
other types of content to pass through, holes are left open
for security breaches. Security for Web content manage-
ment is an integral part of the enterprise IT system. It
includes four major areas: identity management, access
management, threat management, and privacy manage-
ment (IBM, 2002). Identity management deals with user
ID, password, and account setup and change, while ac-
cess management needs to support any type of user au-
thentication and to control access to any type of resource
from the authenticated users. When the system is intruded
upon or attacked, the threat management function should
be able to quickly determine the severity of attacks and
issue alerts to the whole system. Some of the security ar-
eas (e.g., privacy management) overlap with access con-
trol and legal aspects of content management mentioned
earlier.TRENDS
Web sites at present are becoming increasingly complex.
Managing complex interrelationships among these sites
and documents inside them requires a collaborative effort
between developers, content contributors, and Web pro-
fessionals. The Gartner Group predicted four key trends
in Web content management:(1) it is becoming a core management tool supporting
e-business and other critical applications;
(2) vendors will begin to consolidate disparate technolo-
gies into their offerings, such as rich media support,
catalog management, syndication, and personaliza-
tion;
(3) the Web content management market is filled with
small or financially troubled vendors that will merge,
be acquired, or simply cease operations in the coming
year; and
(4) prices have come down dramatically, and will con-
tinue to fall down (Latham, 2002).While this forecast focuses more on the marketplace of
Web content management, it also implies some of the
more specialized areas developing rapidly.
One of such specialized areas is digital rights man-
agement (DRM). By definition, DRM represents the con-
cepts, systems, and functions that enable content owners
to distribute various forms of digital assets securely, main-
tain visibility to its creators, and determine the means
by which that content can be used, reused, purchased,
copied, and distributed by its users (Wood, 2002). The con-
tent value chains make DRM increasingly important in a
content management system. Open source is another area
gaining popularity on the marketplace for content man-
agement systems. Open source usually includes packages
and tools distributed free of charge under a license that
guarantees the right for developers to read, redistribute,modify, and use the software (source code and all) freely.
Open-source architectures are popular not only because
they are free, but also because they tend to be fairly stable
and some major open-source projects provide access to a
vast network of global developers, who offer support and
share knowledge around the clock.
Knowledge-driven organization of Web content has
been a hot topic in the past few years. As XML, RDF, and
ontologies are being developed and adopted by more and
more Web sites, Web developers and content authors are
expected to create and deliver the content using templates
built based on knowledge models. Knowledge structures
such as ontologies and taxonomies have become the un-
derpinning infrastructure for the content, structure, and
presentation of a Web content management system.GLOSSARY
Collaborative authoring A field of computer-supported
collaborative work (CSCW) concerned with tools that
allow teams of two or more to create a document to-
gether: examples include a 10-page paper, a blueprint
of an industrial plant, a million-line computer pro-
gram, and a hypertext encyclopedia with hundreds of
thousands of entries (Vitali, 2002); also known by the
terms computer-supported collaborative writing, coop-
erative writing, cooperative editing, shared editing, and
group editing.
Concurrent versions system (CVS) The dominant
open-source network-transparent version control sys-
tem; useful for everyone from individual developers to
large, distributed teams. It uses the client–server ac-
cess method and allows developers to access the latest
code from anywhere there’s an Internet connection. Its
features, such as the unreserved checkout model and
version control, avoid artificial conflicts common with
the exclusive checkout model (CollabNet, 2002).
Content transformation The transformation of an
XML document into HTML, XHTML, or other forms
that can be presented through a viewing device by writ-
ing an XML stylesheet language (XSL) template and
formatting rules in order to deliver the document’s con-
tent to users while maintaining its structure.
Digital rights management (DRM) The concepts, sys-
tems, and functions that enable content owners to se-
curely distribute various forms of digital assets, main-
tain visibility to its creators, and determine the means
by which that content can be used, reused, purchased,
copied, and distributed by its users.
Document management The process of managing doc-
uments through their life cycle from inception through
creation, review, storage and dissemination all the way
to their destruction (Document Management Avenue,
2002).
Staging Web site A copy of the production Web site that
developers use to test before the changes or new con-
tent goes live on the production site.
Taxonomy A method for structuring and classifying
things—products, customers, and services—into a se-
ries of hierarchical groups to make them easier to iden-
tify, study, or locate.