Connecting Ektron with third party enterprise systems - ektron

I am working in ektron 8.6.
I am trying to connect a third party enterprise systems to ektron.
DxH has got a pre-built marketing automation connector,which is Marketo.
My third party enterprise connector is also a marketing automation system.
I am following the developer webinar to get this done.
Now,my question is eventhough i made establishing connection to the third party system by means of ConextBus API,i need to make some changes in the workarea files for implementing certain functionalities.
So is it necessary to have the connection established via DxH?
What is the significance of this compared to handling all these functionalities from the ektron site?
Can anyone provide me some insight on this?

If you're asking "why use DxH?" the main answer is its tight integration with Ektron. You can continue using your marketing automation system and it will share relevant data with Ektron. If you are instead looking to perform a wholesale migration away from a particular system, you can certainly do a one-time import of data into Ektron using the APIs. The difference there is that you would be moving away from the 3rd party system, whereas the DxH and its ContextBus allows both systems to work together.
You mentioned a webinar that you are following, so you may have already seen this, but there's a good webinar on the DxH here: http://www.ektron.com/Webinars/Details/Digital-Experience-Hub---Developer-Webinar/

Related

How do I launch/publish my website? ASP.NET Core

I'm new to web development and just built my first website with .Net Core. It's primarily HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with a little C# for a contact form.
Without recommending any service providers (question will be taken down), how do I go about deploying the website? The more details the better as I have no idea what I'm doing haha.
Edit: I am definitely going to go with a service provider, however the business I am building the website for doesn't have a large budget so I want to find the best provider at the lowest cost.
Daniel,
As you suspect, this is a bit of a loaded question as there are so many approaches. One approach is to use App Services within Microsoft Azure. You can create a free trial Azure account to start that includes a 200.00 credit, which is more than enough to do all of this for free. Then, using the Azure Management Portal, create an App Service (also free) on an App Service Plan in a region that makes sense for you (i.e. US West). Once you do that, you can download what is called a Publish Profile from within the App Service's Management Portal in Azure.
If you're using Visual Studio, for example, you can then right click your project and "Publish" it (deploy to the cloud, or the App Service you just created). One option in that process is to import an Azure Publish Profile, which you can do with the one you just downloaded. This makes it really simple. The Publish Profile is really just connection information to your Azure App Service (open it in Notepad to see). It will chug for a bit and then publish and load the app for you. You can also get to the hosted version of your app by clicking the Url of the app in the App Service management portal on the main page.
This may be oversimplifying what you need to do, but this is a valid direction to take. AWS and others have similar approaches.
Again, tons of ways to do this, but this is a free approach. :-) I don't consider Azure a Service Provider in the sense that you asked us not to. Instead, I wanted to outline one turn-key approach with specific details on how to get there.
You can find specific steps in a lot of places, such as this link:
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/deploying-your-web-app-using-azure-app-service/
DanielG's answer is useful, but you mentioned you don't want use any services from service provider.
Usually, there are only three ways to deploy the program,
first one is the app service provided by the service provider mentioned by DanielG,
**Benefits of using service provider products:**
1. Very friendly to newbies, follow the documentation to deploy the application in a few minutes.
2. It offers a very stable, scalable service that monitors the health of our website.
3. We can get their technical support.
**Shortcoming**
It is a paid service, and although Azure's service has a free quota, it will run out.
**Suggestion**
It is recommended that websites that are officially launched use the services of service providers.
second one is to use fixed IP for access (it seems that fixed iPv4 IP is not provided in network operations),
**Benefits of using fixed IP:**
If there is a fixed IP address, or if the carrier supports iPv6, we can deploy our website, and the public network can access it. And if you have domain, it also can support https.
**Shortcoming**
1. There are cybersecurity risks and are vulnerable to attack.
2. Without perfect website health monitoring, all problems need to be checked by yourself, and it is very troublesome to achieve elastic expansion.
**Suggestion**
It is generally not recommended because there is no fixed IP under normal circumstances. Broadband operators used to offer it, but now it doesn't.
If you are interested, you can try ipv6 to test.
the last one is to use tools such as ngrok or frp for intranet penetration.
**Benefits of using intranet penetration:**
Free intranet penetration services such as ngrok, the URL generated by each run is not fixed, and there are some limitations, such as a new URL will be generated after a certain period of time, which is enough for testing.
Of course you can purchase the service of this tool, which provides fixed URLs and supports https.
**Shortcoming (same as the second one)**
**Suggestion**
The functional implementation is the same as the second suggestion, and the physical devices used by the website are all their own. The intranet penetration tool (ngrok, or frp) solves the problem of not having a fixed IP, providing a URL that you can access.
There are few users and the demand for web services is not high, so it is recommended that individual users or small business users use ngrok and frp in this scenario. Generally suitable for OA use in small businesses.

Apache OFBiz as portal solution?

We currently need a portal solution. One of our service providers has already suggested that we develop the portal in Apache OFBiz.
Now I would like to know if Apache OFBiz is still state of the art or if it is already on the way down.
Or is there another technology we should consider.
Best Regards,
Foerstar
Apache OFBiz is a solid Open Source framework that is actively maintained and updated by its community that is part of the Apache Software Foundation.
While the OFBiz architecture has been outlined years ago, it is still a modern framework that incorporates several pragmatic patterns and is designed to be flexible and extendable. Moreover various components and technologies have been kept up to date or replaced with newer ones over the years.
It is impossible to tell you if OFBiz is a good fit for your portal solution because I don't know your specific needs but my recommendation is to at least consider it especially if in your portal you will publish content related to products or other business entities: if this is the case then the OFBiz universal data model will be a valuable resource that will help you to achieve your goals efficiently and with high quality.

Is there any reason not to host a software repository with a standard web hosting service?

I have webspace and I was thinking of setting up a git repository on it.
If I am developing software and I want to host a repository (CVS, SVN, git, etc) online, is there any reason not to use a standard web hosting provider (GoDaddy, etc) to do this?
I'm thinking in terms of security, reliability, etc.
One reason for not using a standard-company is that usually shell-access is needed to setup a Version Control System (VCS). Many providers don't give shell access on normal webspaces.
When you are developing open-source software I'd recommend hosting at SourceForge, github, Google Code or similar providers, as your code is public there, you will get an issue tracker and several other tools that may help you. On github for example adding more developers to your project is very easy.
When you are developing closed-source software you still can use github, this gives you the same advantages as mentioned above, but of course it costs you a few bucks a month. Open-Source projects are free.
So while there is no real reason to not use standard hosting providers there are good reasons to use a company dedicated on hosting code.
As you asked especially for security: github (I use it as an example, as I host my code there as well) gives you a full list of information of what they do to ensure your code is safe.

BLToolkit - Current readiness for Azure

Does anybody know if BLToolkit has been tested and certified for use with Azure Sql and if it supports the dropped connection retry functionality? And if not are there any plans to get it tested and passed?
At the time of writing, there is nothing official on the BL Toolkit website, and no issues listed in their issue tracker for Azure.
There are a few other requests (e.g. here and here) that are requesting the same details. At the moment they are unanswered but you could add your weight to them.
Based on this evidence from the official sources I would say that the Toolkit is not Tested or Certified specifically for Azure use.
With the exception of the transient nature of Azure which may require handling of database reconnections, there doesn't seem to be anything obvious that would prevent you from using the Toolkit however.
I would recommend you raise an issue with the developers regarding Azure Testing and Certification while performing a proof of concept test on Azure to determine how to best handle reconnections on Azure for your specific application.
There is recent activity on the project, so I'd be quite hopeful of a response.
I wrote Azure Sql Data Provider for BLToolkit. You can find its sources on github.
Also it's available over NuGet. Please, see how to install and configure it here.

Enterprise SSO & Identity management / recommendations

We've discussed SSO before. I would like to re-enhance the conversation with defined requirements, taking into consideration recent new developments.
In the past week I've been doing market research looking for answers to the following key issues:
The project should should be:
Requirements
SSO solution for web applications.
Integrates into existing developed products.
has Policy based password security (Length, Complexity, Duration and co)
Security Policy can be managed using a web interface.
Customizable user interface (the password prompt and co. screens).
Highly available (99.9%)
Scalable.
Runs on Red Hat Linux.
Nice to have
Contains user Groups & Roles.
Written in Java.
Free Software (open source) solution.
None of the solutions came up so far are "killer choice" which leads me to think I will be tooling several projects (OWASP, AcegiSecurity + X??) hence this discussion.
We are ISV delivering front-end & backend application suite. The frontend is broken into several modules which should act as autonomous unit, from client point of view he uses the "application" - which leads to this discussion regrading SSO.
I would appreciate people sharing their experience & ideas regarding the appropriete solutions.
Some solutions are interesting
CAS
Sun OpenSSO Enterprise
JBoss Identity IDM
JOSSO
Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On
Or more generally speaking this list
Thank you,
Maxim.
What about FreeIPA?
"FreeIPA is an integrated security information management solution combining Linux (Fedora), 389 (formerly known as Fedora Directory Server), MIT Kerberos, NTP, DNS. It consists of a web interface and command-line administration tools."
If you focus on web applications, check out http://oauth.net/.
CAS has strong adoption, user-base, and a strong lead (who recently switched jobs, but is still comitted to the project). It is straightforward to integrate (if you're comfortable writing Java code/configuring Spring beans), and can do all your requirements, noteably:
SSO solution for web applications.
YES
Integrates into existing developed products.
YES (though some cleaner than others - but many modules are available for major products, and it supports common standards (SAML, OpenID).
has Policy based password security (Length, Complexity, Duration and co)
*YES - can easily be implemented, and some extensions to integrate with LDAP (probably the most common user store) are supported
Security Policy can be managed using a web interface.
NO - though one could be build fairly simply - if you're comfortable with development, and given that this is likely to be a non-trivial project, I'd recommend considering this a non-blocker given that the product is open-source
Customizable user interface (the password prompt and co. screens).
YES - easily customized through some basic HTML/CSS editing
Highly available (99.9%)
YES - both reliable, and can support multiple node/failover scenarios easily
Scalable.
YES - used in many high-traffic environments both intranet and internet
Runs on Red Hat Linux.
YES
Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-On is not what you're after - it requires a Windows executable to be deployed. Oracle Access Manager is closer to what you're after (though it's not free or Java-based).
The major commercial players in the Identity and Access Management (IAM) market space are CA, Oracle, IBM, Sun and Novell. None of these are free solutions but they have many of the features that you are looking for.
For free software, I recommend DACS: The Distributed Access Control System. I know that one department where I work has implemented this with great success. It doesn't have as many features the commercial IAM products but otherwise is a good solution.
I have used Tivoli Access Manager backing onto Websphere and IIS boxes - the way it writes access information into the page headers is very useful. On the downside, I didnt find the DB2 Ldap backend very scalable or reliable, and you know with IBM this isn't going to come cheap.
Also the asynchronous paths (junctions) used to identify different servers is a bit of a hack really eg http://mysite/myserver/myapp - a very bad idea and not thought through very well.