Have you ever looked for an Open Source CMS for your site? Have you ever faced any problems while developing functional models? Most likely you thought “It would?be cool if there was a macro language to describe my site interfaces without any limitations to predefined stamps.” And you were definitely right!
In reality, there were numerous Content Management Systems, but there was no concept that describes CMS model as a whole and unifies functionality with the program core. Still, a concept like this really exists! It is described in XML Sapiens specification available here. XML Sapiens is an XML-oriented language for user interface description, developed and supported by Red Graphic Systems.
XML Sapiens treats any site or a family of web sites (multitude of sites and their language versions) in three dimensions: data, its presentation and functionality. In other words, any web document includes unique data, a presentation template and a functional model. In this way, while generating a web document the CMS parser analyzes it?s template for XML Sapiens objects. All query containers will be replaced with appropriate data from data depositary (for example, database).
During an admin session, these containers will be replaced with data query forms. Static data containers will be replaced with the appropriate code, attached to them. In the end, dynamic data containers will be replaced with a code, generated in compliance with their functional model.
As such, dynamic data containers are just tools for managing web site functionality.
But how does it all work? For example, we are planning to make a layout with a side menu on all pages according to template X. So we should define the XML Sapiens dynamic data container. A pointer to CMS application that returns a site structure array will be placed into this definition. Here we can also determine rules and styles for data presentation. And the last thing: we need to locate the pointer to our dynamic data container in template X. Just in the same way we are able to determine different navigation forms, interactive forms, information channels, etc. We can even configure a template and its containers to display web documents in XML format, which will be understood by Flash application, Java applet, WAP browser or SVG.
So why should you limit your creative ideas and development? Use XML Sapiens and you are a success!
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