The Plumtree Object Model is the foundation for the portal's interaction with remote servers. This page provides a conceptual overview. For specific details on Plumtree objects, see the portal server API on devcenter.plumtree.com. For information on using the PRC to access portal objects, see PRC Use Cases.
The Session object is the master object; most other Plumtree objects must be derived from it. A session becomes valid for a given Plumtree system after you successfully connect to that system using the Session's Connect method. All subsequent access to the API is made in the security context of the connected user. Users in the Administrators Group have superuser access. Users in Content Manager and Content Maintainer Groups also have privileged access. For details on portal Groups and specific privileges, see the Portal Administrator's Guide.
A Session object is created whenever any user logs in to the Plumtree system, through the Web, the Content Manager application, or any client application. Initiating a session is the first step in any implementation of the PRC.
The Session object supports the IPTSession interface. The Session object is comprised of:
a set of Object Managers for the objects of the Plumtree system
the User object representing the current user of the system
the Catalog object representing the structure of the Plumtree catalog
version information
access to global Plumtree objects such as the MyPortal object, the scheduler, and global mapping objects
Object Managers are objects that support the IPTObjectManager interface, surfaced in the PRC as IObjectManager. Objects implementing this interface are used within the Session object to manage classes of Plumtree system objects, and are used to store, create, delete, maintain, copy, and query sets of related objects.
An Object Manager is like a super collection. It provides advanced querying capabilities as well as create, delete, and clone methods. There are numerous Object Managers within a Session object, including managers for Authentication Sources, Crawlers, Data Sources, Document Types, Filters, Network Searches (also referred to as Federated Portals), Portlets, Issues, Jobs, Properties, Publications, Syndicated Portlets, Sites, Taxonomists, Groups, and Users. Other managers will be added as new object classes are introduced.
Although all Object Managers support the IPTObjectManager interface, and therefore implement the same basic properties and methods, each Object Manager may implement some of its own object-specific properties and methods. The PRC provides access to IObjectManager for all portal objects, as well as object-specific managers for jobs, portlets, portlet templates, search services, users and groups. The PRC also provides a manager for documents in the Knowledge Directory.
For use cases and examples, see PRC Use Cases.
Next: PRC Use Cases