Tutorial: Extending a Management Center tool to support content versioning for a custom object

In this tutorial, you learn how to add support for the content versioning feature in a new Management Center tool.

The content versioning feature manages versions of business objects. Currently, this feature is only supported in the Catalog service module. For more information about the content versioning feature, see: Content versioning.

In this tutorial, you extend the Recipe tool to include content versioning support for the Recipe custom objects such as Project and ProjectCollection. With the content versioning feature enabled, the Recipe Manager can create, delete, restore, update, and retrieve versions of the custom objects.

Note: This tutorial is using the Derby database. If you are using DB2 or Oracle, ensure that you make the appropriate changes. The appendix page is performed against DB2.

Learning objectives

After you complete this tutorial, you should be familiar with the following concepts:

The content versioning feature
The UpdateVersionSchema utility.
Access control policies
Resource bundles

After completing this tutorial, you should be able to perform the following tasks:

Create custom content versioning configuration files, and update the version schema with your custom tables.
Change Management Center definitions to support content versioning.
Change Management Center view definitions, such as the properties views to support content versioning (add the Versions tab to the user interface).
Enable version services in the definition file.
Create a serialization JSP file to get the version-related information for the custom objects.
Update the query template file to include the version parameter to make the different versions viewable.
View version details.

Time required

Expect this tutorial to take four hours to complete. The tutorial can take longer if you explore concepts that are related to this tutorial.

Skill level

This tutorial is intended for advanced WebSphere Commerce developers responsible for customizing the Management Center user interface and content versioning feature. To complete this tutorial, you should be familiar with the following terms and concepts:

WebSphere Commerce services
Management Center framework
Web services
Access control
Data service layer
Business object mediator
XML
SQL
Rational Application Developer
JSP and Serialization JSP files
Query template files

System requirements

Before you begin this tutorial, ensure that you complete the following tasks:

Install WebSphere Commerce Developer Version 7
Installed WebSphere Commerce Version 7 FEP2 or higher
Complete the Creating the Project BOD service module tutorial.
Complete the Adding a Recipes tool to the Management Center tutorial.

Tutorial resources

To complete this tutorial, the following resources are used. Ensure that you download and extract any compressed files that contain required code samples to a temporary directory, such as C:\Temp before you begin this tutorial:

RecipeVersion.zip.