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Developing an Information Management Tool with Existing Technologies
With the production and distribution of information being done by various method and technologies, there is strong demand and an ongoing development struggle for information management tools to handle the continuously growing information effectively (one of the tools is MS Share Point). This article discusses how to develop an effective information management tool by merely embedding required integration code in the Microsoft technologies software you already use.
I advise using commercial portal software in your enterprise solutions, but I also think it will be necessary to do research in this regard. First, determine the criteria about how to improve productivity in your company and the needs of your company. For this, I suggest consultation. Regarding the reports and productivity outcomes, it is necessary to decide on alternative Knowledge Management portals. Your counselor can help you decide on the best solution and decision.
We should not forget that although commercial portal software includes very strong mechanisms, they may not meet your needs thoroughly. Commercial portal software may not be flexible enough to meet the needs of every company. In these situations, compose your solution with the software already existing in your company (such as operating system, Office, web server, database) and with your IT department.
In this article I will try to tell you how to make a simple portal solution that is customized to your company by using solely Microsoft technologies. This will provide you with a one-to-one solution oriented to the needs of your company and will form your information management mechanism with your own sources.
The purpose of this article not to assert that commercial portal software is unnecessary, but to seriously address the administration of the information produced in your company to improve productivity. This will be the most important step of your business. It will be more accurate to find the medium you need or to install the necessary mechanisms after reports about your needs are prepared.
Purpose
The portal application aims to create a secure, customizable, manageable, and easy-to-use web-based platform for organizational users to share and access vital corporate knowledge efficiently on a need-to-know basis.
The user-friendly interface of the portal application helps users to customize and personalize the portal according to their needs. It also enables users to work in a more comfortable and efficient environment to maximize creativity.
The vital corporate information within the portal application platform is accessed via 128 bit encrypted Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection, thus protecting the corporate knowledge from eavesdroppers.
The portal application serves as a corporate single sign-on entry-point for all the applications within the organization, thus enabling customized and personalized control over the applications within the organization from a single point.
The vital corporate information that is kept within the portal application platform is structured in a special way so that the information is not associated with individual users. Instead, the information is associated with user roles so that the collective information is used to create a corporate knowledge instead of a personal one.
Overall, the use of the portal application helps users form a corporate knowledge, aids decision-making, accessing and sharing of information, and activities management.
The portal application project was designed to work on the Internet Information Server (IIS) 6.0 and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 running on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. The portal uses Dynamic HTML and Active Server Pages technologies. Even though only Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) was used for server side scripting, both Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) and JavaScript were used for Dynamic HTML on the client side.
The portal application also makes great use of the Active Directory Service. Portal users’ profiles are kept on the Active Directory and allowed parts can be modified within the portal. Information such as a user’s computer, organizational unit, and role are automatically retrieved, by the use of ADSI (Active Directory Services Interface), from the Active Directory on logon and user’s portal window is customized according to this information.
The portal application is made of customizable service windows, each a simple database application within itself, a page layout management section, a profile management section, and a project management application. Each service window is located in an iframe on the main portal application window. By using Dynamic HTML and iframe technologies, service windows’ position can be changed by simply dragging and dropping them to their new location. Service windows can also be removed and added back again to the portal application’s main window according to users’ preferences. After each session these modifications are saved to a database server. These preferences are read back from the database server on each session start for each portal user and placed in a client side XML DOM Document. All user customizations are saved in this XML DOM Document and kept on the client side until the session terminates. Then the modified XML DOM Document is written back to the database server, thus reducing the network traffic and the load on the database server.
In some of the services, ActiveX Objects such as the Outlook View Control Object and the Netmeeting Object were used to make these services accessible within the portal application. Some of the other services are also reliant on Microsoft technologies such as Active Directory and Microsoft Indexing Service. These services include an Active Directory navigation tool for profile queries and project indexing for project searches.
Some services in the portal application make use of several technologies at once. For example the video conferencing service window creates a list of users that are allowed to make video conferencing call according to their role using the Active Directory. It then filters the list according to the user's online status and retrieves the computer names of these online users to make it possible for Netmeeting ActiveX Control object to place calls to these users. The rest of the service windows are reliant on some sort of data stored on the database server such as weather conditions, exchange rates, dictionary, etc.
The portal application also includes a project management application. This feature helps the portal users to enter their project details to a database server and upload their related documents to a user folder on the file server in order to share their project details with other users who have access rights. Uploaded files are protected against unauthorized use via NTFS directory access rights. Project files are automatically indexed via Microsoft Indexing Service so that authorized users can query the uploaded project files catalog and have an easy access to information by using the portal’s projects service window.
The portal also serves as the single sign-on point for other web-based applications that run on other platforms. The authentication process of the portal is done by the help of Windows NT authentication, and the authorization is done by the help of Active Directory Services. Once a user is authenticated through the Windows NT authentication process, their role is determined by the help of the Active Directory Service, and the user is authorized to use the predefined services and other web-based applications for that role.
User profile is a feature of the portal application, which is used by portal users to control information kept about them in the Active Directory. By the use of the user profile feature, users can monitor their information that is retrieved from the Active Directory by using Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI) and modify them if necessary. Modification can only be done on the areas that are allowed by the domain or enterprise administrators that are responsible from the Active Directory Services.
The User Profile feature also enables users to access the Active Directory from the portal application’s web-based interface and change their Windows 2000 domain logon password. This feature is also dependent on the domain or enterprise administrators’ permission.
2. User Page Layout
The user page layout feature of the portal application is utilized by the users to manage their service window layouts in their portal application’s main document window. With the help of this feature, users are able to add service windows of various types to their portal application’s main document window or remove them if they desire.
The user page layout feature works on a need-to-know basis so the users can only add service windows that they are allowed to use. Other service windows are not even visible to unauthorized users.
Every setting a user modifies with the user page layout window is kept on a client side XML DOM document and saved to the database server on each user session termination. The service windows that users are allowed to access are determined by the help of the Active Directory Service. Each user’s role is determined from the Active Directory Service on each user session start, and only the allowed service windows for that role are served to the users. In this way, users are not able to see the service windows that they are not supposed to see.
3. User Project Management
The portal application includes a project management application to handle users’ projects within the organization from a single location. With the help of the project management application, users are able to create projects, enter project details and project summary, and attach associated project documents of various types and upload them to a user folder on the file server to share with other users of the portal application.
Once a project is created, users are allowed to review and modify their projects as they wish. Using the projects/activities service window, users are also able to search through other users’ projects and view their project details and associated project documents, if they have adequate access rights.
Projects details created using the project management application feature of the portal application are stored on a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database so that other users can query this database and get information on other users’ projects. The associated files that are uploaded by users, however, are not stored in a database server. They are stored in a user folder on the file server for Microsoft Indexing Service to create a full text search catalog, but their association information with the projects is stored in the database.
In this way when the users of the portal application search for a keyword to find a specific project, the keyword is searched through both the database entries on the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database and the full text search catalog of the uploaded files created by Microsoft Indexing Service. This retrieves the most relevant project information available to users who are performing the search by using the projects/activities service window.
4. External Applications
The portal application serves as a corporate single sign-on entry-point for all the applications within the organization. The authentication process of the portal is done by the help of Windows NT authentication, and the authorization is done by the help of Active Directory Services.
Once a user is authenticated through the Windows NT authentication process, their role is determined with the help of the Active Directory Service. The user is authorized to utilize the predefined services and other web based applications for that role.
Since the portal application determines the role of the portal users and authenticates them, there is no need for other applications to perform these tasks. In this way a central control is achieved regarding who is authorized to use which application. This also makes things easier for new application developers within the organization because they do not need to worry about authorization and authentication issues while developing their software.
5. Organization Structure
This feature of the portal application allows users to navigate through the organizational structure of the Active Directory Service by the use of Active Directory Service Interface (ADSI). Since the organizational structure already exists in the Active Directory Service, the portal application uses this organizational structure instead of creating a new redundant one, thus saving extra effort and system resources.
With the help of Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI), users can move up and down the hierarchical organizational structure to locate departments and users within the departments. Users can also gain information about other users’ profiles in different departments by using this feature. Profile information includes address, phone number, computer name, etc.
This feature is also used in other services of the portal application. For example, a phone book was created by modifying this feature. In addition, conferencing service uses this feature to locate other users’ computer information to place calls.
The hierarchical organization structure information held in the Active Directory is so valuable that this feature of the portal application can be used in many other services within the portal application in the future.
The portal application includes a variety of services, which serve many different functions such as weather conditions, exchange rates, favorite links, etc. These services come in service windows which can be minimized, maximized, moved, added, or removed from the main portal application main document window according to user preferences with the help of Dynamic HTML effects.
Not all the service windows are available to all the users of the portal application. The availability of service windows is determined by the user’s role, which is determined from the Active Directory Services by the use of Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI).
Most of the service windows are used to serve certain kinds of information to interested users who are allowed to see that information such as weather condition, exchange rates, dictionary, etc. For favorite links, users provide this kind of necessary user-specific information.
The information that these services provide is stored in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database and brought to users in service windows by the help of ActiveX Data Object (ADO) component of the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC).
7. Search
The search feature of the portal application’s project management part helps its users to search and locate project information and associated project documents of portal application’s users. The search feature performs two different kind of search while searching for project details.
The first type of search method is the full text search, which is performed by using Microsoft Indexing Service. Microsoft Indexing Service is repeatedly indexing the folders where users upload their associated project documents, and a full text search catalog is being created. The keywords that the users provide to perform a search are searched from this catalog to see if they appear in a file that is uploaded as a part of user project. If they do, more information about these files are retrieved and presented to the user who is performing the search using the portal application’s project search service window.
The second type of search method is the database search, which is performed by using ActiveX Data Object (ADO) of the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC). By using ActiveX Data Objects, the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database is queried against these keywords that the users provide to see if these keywords match any user project details that are stored in the database server. If a matching result is found by any of the search methods, both in the Microsoft Indexing Service Catalog and Microsoft SQL Server database, then the results are merged and presented together as a single project.
8. Conferencing
The conferencing feature of the portal application helps user communicate with each other via different kinds of media such as audio, video, text, whiteboard, or combinations of these. The conferencing feature is a service window, and like all other service windows, the conferencing service window can be associated to certain roles so that its use can be limited to authorized users only. The video conferencing feature can be further limited to a small number of users in order to save crucial bandwidth.
The conferencing service window includes the Microsoft Netmeeting ActiveX Control object to perform these conferencing tasks for its users. The conferencing service window also uses Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database and the Active Directory Service in combination with some scripting to create extra features and make conferencing easier.
Using the Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI), a list of users who are allowed to use conferencing feature can be retrieved with their computer name information so the users can place a call simply by clicking their name on the list. In addition, a list of online users is kept on the database server so when retrieving the list of conferencing enabled users, the online users are marked so the user who wants to place a conference call is able to tell if the other user who is about to be called is available or not. Users of this service are also able to retrieve a list of online users so they can select who they want to call from a smaller list of users and call them simply by clicking their name from this list.
Since the conferencing service window uses the Microsoft Netmeeting ActiveX Control object to perform these tasks, it has to be configured correctly on users’ computers. It is also important that the computer information held on the Active Directory for each user is kept up to date in order for users to place calls to correct users’ computers.
9. Outlook Integration
The portal application has a number of service windows, which are used to add some of Microsoft Outlook’s features into the portal itself to make them more easily accessible to users on a single platform amongst other services. These service windows include services such as inbox, contacts, tasks, and calendar. Since these service windows are similar to the other service windows within the portal, users are able to add and remove them as they wish.
The portal application uses the Microsoft Outlook View Control ActiveX object to include Microsoft Outlook’s features in its service windows. Microsoft Outlook features such as inbox, contacts, tasks, and calendar are folders of the Microsoft Outlook, and each of these folders is included in different service windows as ActiveX Control objects. In this way, users are able to include or remove these features to their portal, one by one so that the features that are not needed do not take up any space on the portal application’s main window.
By using these service windows, users are able to perform most of the tasks that they could perform by using the Microsoft Outlook from a single point without needing to leave the portal application’s main window.
The use of Microsoft Outlook View Control ActiveX object is dependent on the Microsoft Outlook profile, which is located on the users’ computers. Therefore, in order for these service windows to work, Microsoft Outlook profile settings must be properly created and the user must logon to the computer with appropriate Microsoft Windows 2000 domain credentials.
The Microsoft Internet Information Server is designed to deliver high speed, secure information publishing while also serving as a platform for developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to extend the Internet's standard communication capabilities. The Microsoft Internet Information Server is tightly integrated with Windows 2000 Server to provide an efficient, reliable, scalable, and secure platform for administrators.
The portal application is a web-based application that uses Internet Information Server (IIS) as the web server. The main reason to use IIS is its support for Active Server Pages. Since the portal application is written with Active Server Pages and VBScript, the web server of choice had to support these technologies and work on Windows 2000 Server.
2. Microsoft SQL Server 2000
The portal application relies on Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database for handling the database needs of the application. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database is a Structured Query Language (SQL)–based, scalable, relational database with integrated Extensible Markup Language (XML) support for Internet applications. It is also easily accessible by any Active Server Page by the help of Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), and is therefore suitable for using in this project.
3. Microsoft Data Access Components
Microsoft Data Access Components include ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), OLE DB, and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC). Data-driven client/server applications deployed over the Web or a LAN can use these components to easily integrate valuable information from a variety of sources, both relational (SQL) and non-relational.
In this portal application, the ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) component was used to access and store information about user preferences, weather conditions, dictionary, etc. User preferences of the portal application’s service window layouts are stored in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database. Using ActiveX Data Objects, these preferences are retrieved from the database server and stored in a client side XML DOM Document. When the user logs out or the user session expires, the data in the XML DOM Document is send back to the database server for storage. This is also done by using ADO.
Microsoft ADO provides consistent, high-performance access to data and supports a variety of development needs, including the creation of front-end database clients and middle-tier business objects that use applications, tools, languages, or Internet browsers. The primary benefits of ADO are ease of use, high speed, low memory overhead, and a small disk footprint.
4. Extensible Markup Language (XML)
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is the emerging Internet standard for data. XML is a set of tags that can be used to define the structure of a hypertext document. XML documents can be easily processed by the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which is the most important language for displaying Web pages.
In this portal application, XML was used to store window layout information on the client side until the user leaves the session. Instead of accessing the database every time a user changes something on the portal window, all the settings are loaded to a XML DOM Document on the client side. Therefore, every time a user changes something, these changes are saved to this client side XML DOM Document, thus reducing the network traffic and the load on the database server. In order to save all these modified settings, the XML DOM Document is sent back to the web server when the session terminates. Then it is written back to the database server.
5. XML Document Object Model (DOM)
The Document Object Model (DOM) class is an in-memory representation of an XML document. The DOM allows you to programmatically read, manipulate, and modify an XML document. Editing is the primary function of the DOM. The XML DOM provides a standardized way to access and manipulate the information stored in XML documents. The DOM API serves as a bridge between applications similar to the portal application and XML documents.
This portal application also uses XML DOM to access and manipulate the XML Documents that contain data on user preferences. On each user session start, user’s preferences are loaded to a client side XML DOM Document. After every modification, the processing for that modification is done from this XML DOM Document. When the user session terminates, these modifications are saved back to the database server.
6. Active Directory Service
The Active Directory is the directory service included with Microsoft Windows 2000. It extends the features of previous Windows-based directory services and adds entirely new features. Active Directory is secure, distributed, partitioned, and replicated. It is designed to work well in any size installation, from a single server with a few hundred objects to thousands of servers and millions of objects. Active Directory adds many new features that make it easy to navigate and manage large amounts of information, generating savings for both administrators and end users.
Microsoft Active Directory Service is a fundamental service for distributed applications. It provides features such as location transparency, information on people and services, rich query, high availability, and more advanced features like support for Internet standards (LDAP, DNS), tightly integrated and flexible security, and scriptable interfaces for easy access (ADSI).
The portal application makes a great use of the Active Directory Service. The portal application uses Active Directory Service to gain information about user profiles, user roles, user computer information, listings of phone and address details, and hierarchical listing of the organization.
The portal application accesses the Active Directory Service by the use of Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI).
The primary and recommended application-programming interface (API) for Active Directory is Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI). ADSI enables access to Active Directory by exposing objects stored in the directory as COM objects. A directory object is manipulated using the methods on one or more COM interfaces. ADSI has a very simple programming model. Since ADSI is fully scriptable, it is easy to develop rich Web applications. ADO and OLE DB are supported for querying. By supporting ADO and OLE DB, Active Directory is just another OLE DB data provider.
ADSI makes it easier to perform common administrative tasks such as adding new users, managing printers, and locating resources throughout the distributed computing environment. ADSI also makes it easy for developers to "directory enable" their applications.
In this portal application, ADSI was used to access the Active Directory to gain user profile, role, and computer information and make modifications.
8. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a directory service protocol that runs directly over the TCP/IP stack. The information model (both for data and for namespaces) of LDAP is similar to that of the X.500 OSI directory service but with fewer features and lower resource requirements than X.500. Unlike most other Internet protocols, LDAP has an associated API that simplifies writing Internet directory service applications. The LDAP API is applicable to directory management and browser applications that do not have directory service support as their primary function.
Microsoft also provides the ADSI for developing client-side directory service applications. ADSI consists of a directory service model and a set of COM interfaces. These interfaces allow you to develop network directory service access applications for Windows NT/2000 and Windows 95/98. ADSI uses an LDAP provider to communicate the Active Directory and is the recommended API for directory services. ADSI can communicate with various directory services by using their native providers.
This portal application queries the Active Directory with LDAP through the use of ADSI. It is used to locate other users’ profiles, their computer information and even their online status with the help of the Microsoft SQL Server and some scripting.
9. Active Server Pages
Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) is an open, compile-free, server-side scripting environment that you can use to build powerful web applications and to create interactive web pages by combining HTML pages, scripts, and Microsoft ActiveX server components.
When the server receives a request for an ASP file, it processes server-side scripts contained in the file to build the web page that is sent to the browser. In addition to server-side scripts, ASP files can contain HTML (including related client-side scripts) as well as calls to COM components that perform a variety of tasks, such as connecting to a database or processing business logic.
ASP offers native support for Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) and Microsoft JScript, and supports other scripting languages such as REXX, Python, and Perl through Active Scripting plug-ins. ASP also supports ActiveX Scripting, allowing virtually any scripting engine to be used. It allows web developers to write scripts that are executed on either the server or the client.
The portal application is written using Microsoft Active Server Pages for the reasons mentioned above. For client side scripting of the Active Server Pages, Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) was used, but for the client side Dynamic HTML effects and XML Document Object Model (DOM) management scripts, the choice of the scripting language was a combination of both JavaScript and VBScript.
10. Dynamic HTML
Dynamic HTML is a set of innovative features in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0. By enabling authors to dynamically change the rendering and content of a document, Dynamic HTML gives authors the ability to create visually outstanding HTML documents that interact with the user without the burden of relying on server-side programs or complicated sets of HTML pages to achieve special effects.
Dynamic HTML achieves these effects by modifying the current document and automatically reformatting and redisplaying the document to show changes. It does not need to reload the document or load a new document, or require a distant server to generate new content. Instead, it uses the power of the user's computer to calculate and carry out changes. Typically, Dynamic HTML documents are self-contained, using styles and a little script to process user input and directly manipulate the HTML tags, attributes, styles, and text in the document.
In the portal application, current look and feel such as the drag and drop effects of the service window iframes and selection highlights are achieved by using Dynamic HTML special effects. With the help of these special effects, users can minimize and maximize, add and remove, and alter positions of service windows. When these modifications are made on Dynamic HTML document window, an associated piece of vbscript code is triggered and user preferences are saved by the help of Dynamic HTML.
11. Microsoft Indexing Service
Indexing Service is a base service of Microsoft Windows NT/2000 that extracts content from files and constructs an indexed catalog to facilitate efficient and rapid searching.
Indexing Service can extract both text and property information from files on the local host and on remote, networked hosts. The files can be simply members of a selected file system or part of a virtual web hosted by, for example, Internet Information Services (IIS).
The Indexing Service then merges the extracted information into catalogs of indexes for efficient searches. Indexing is the overall process of filtering, creating index entries and merging them into catalogs.
The final step in the indexing process is the creation of a catalog that contains a master index (and any temporary word lists and shadow indexes) storing words and their locations within a set of indexed documents. Subsequently, searching, or querying the catalogs for particular word combinations uses the master index as well as word lists and shadow indexes to execute queries quickly and efficiently.
The project management application of the portal application enables users to update their files to a file server in order to share them with other authorized users. These updated files (usually Microsoft Office documents) are automatically indexed and a catalog is created by the Indexing Service of Microsoft Windows 2000. Whenever a project document is needed, users can search for specific keywords about that document on the Indexing Service’s catalog to retrieve that document. This helps portal users to share and locate their project documents easily.
12. ActiveX Controls
Microsoft ActiveX controls, formerly known as OLE controls or OCX controls, are components (or objects) you can insert into a web page or other application to reuse packaged functionality that someone else programmed. For example, the ActiveX controls that are included with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 3.0 or higher allow you to enhance your web pages with sophisticated formatting features and animation.
There are literally hundreds of ActiveX controls available today with functionality ranging from a timer control (which simply notifies its container at a particular time) to full-featured spreadsheets and word processors.
The portal application uses Outlook View Control and Netmeeting ActiveX Control objects. Users of the portal application are able to check their mailboxes, manage their contacts and tasks with the help of Outlook View Control. In addition, with Netmeeting ActiveX Control users can communicate with each other via voice, video and/or text messaging. All these tasks can be achieved within a single web browser by using these ActiveX Controls.
In this article, my goal was to outline how to form a powerful information management mechanism with Microsoft technologies you have. I want to strongly emphasize again that at first you should determine the existing information systems and how you will bring together the information produced with the users. The keyword here is productivity, to provide the best integration, with the existing objects you have, which improve productivity.
It is necessary not to consider the concept of portal as an interface of links that are personalized and strengthened with some mechanisms. With portal approach, evaluate a control center where you can integrate your existing systems and direct users confidentially in a way that is easy to administrate and control. For this, you should find your solution by your existing sources and by taking consultation from firms that specialize in this subject.
In today’s technology, all the existing products are of similar superiority. One can do what another can do. What is true here is the one that uses the existing product efficiently is the best solution. You provide your solution not by looking for the best product but for the one that uses your existing product effectively.
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What is ADO?
