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Setting Up a Content Staging Environment

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A content staging environment is similar to a test environment, except that you use it to test content rather than application configuration. This allows you to develop and test new content without affecting your production applications.

After content is approved, Content Center uses Siebel Business Process Designer and an XML-based content publication service to send it to the production environment. For more information about Siebel workflows, see Siebel Business Process Designer Administration Guide.

Required Components for a Content Staging Environment

Content Center requires a separate Siebel eBusiness Applications installation for your content staging environment. The physical hardware for this environment should be the appropriate size for supporting the number of content center administrators, contributors, and approvers who will manage your business content.

For more information about installing Siebel eBusiness Applications, see the Siebel Server Installation Guide for the operating system you are using.

Your staging environment should contain the following components:

• Database
• Gateway Server
• Siebel Server
• File System
• Web Server and Siebel Web Extension

Maintaining Consistency Between Staging and Production Environments

It is important that the staging and production environments are consistent when Content Center is implemented.

The most important element to keep synchronized is the Siebel repository (.srf) file. This file defines the structure of the application data, for example, the business components and the integration objects.

Keeping the data synchronized is not relevant, with the exception of content and related data. For example, if you use Content Center to manage product literature, then Content Center synchronizes the content by publishing it from staging to the production environment. In this case, products could be related data that also need to be kept synchronized. Although you may have chosen not to manage products through Content Center, nevertheless you must have a user key, such as product ID, that exists in both the staging and production environments so that the association of a piece of literature to a product can be made in the staging area and reproduced in the production environment.

The following are some tips to help you maintain consistency between your staging and production environments.

• If your production environment has not yet been installed, the database administrator should install two separate database instances (one for staging and one for production) using an identical Siebel repository (.srf) file, and initialize both instances with the same seed data. This will make sure that the content object definitions in your staging and production environments are the same.

  For more information, see the Siebel Server Installation Guide for the operating system you are using and Siebel Tools Reference.

• If your production environment is already active, the database administrator should install the staging environment using the same Siebel repository (.srf) file as used for the production environment. Make a copy of your database and use the copy to initialize your staging environment.
• Because you will perform most or all content administration tasks in your staging environment, you should either disable or limit access to the appropriate content administration views in your production environment. This will help prevent administrators from accidentally making updates in the production environment.

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