Product

The Estrada Engine is a configuration-based web application.  This means that the functionality provided by the Engine is consistent among client installations.  The difference is the configuration that instructs the engine on how to behave per installation. 

The important aspect of the configuration-based methodology is that each web site is not a custom implementation.  So maintaining the code base is easier, which means product updates (i.e. bug fixes, functionality enhancements) can be applied without breaking the web site.

Page prototypes provide the ability to configure new page types to be available for content authoring or to modify existing page types to accommodate requirements for a specific implementation.  These page prototypes work in conjunction with the page composition to deliver the required content.  Examples of page prototypes are:

• Page (regular content page)
• Calendar
• Event
• Publication
• Article
• Newsletter

System prototypes are used to deliver system content needed to support other sub-systems such as permissions or workgroups.  These system prototypes are controlled by Estrada and are not used directly in implementations.

Estrada provides a caching sub-system to increase the web site’s responsiveness.  Since Estrada is a dynamic, database-driven content management system, each page is generated on the fly, based on the configuration applicable to the page.  Instead of having to perform the same page generation operation on each request for a page, Estrada performs the page generation operation for the first request of a page and caches the resulting markup.  On each subsequent request for the page, the cached result is rendered.  This provides performance approaching that of a static html site.  The authoring of content automatically causes the page cache to invalidate the appropriate cached pages.  This means the next request for an invalidated page causes the dynamic page generation operation to occur, and so the process continues.

The site configuration and content is stored in a database (SQL Server).  The database can reside on the web server or on another server (Estrada works with SQL Server clusters).