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Litium Studio is a module-based platform for Web Content Management (VCM), Product Information Management (PIM) and E-Commerce. The technical architecture is designed for a high level of extensibility making it easy to add new features and to connect to other systems. This article gives a brief overview of the technical architecture of Litium Studio.
At the bottom a white paper about Litium Studio Architecture and Security are found
Technology
Litium Studio is based on Microsoft .NET 3.5 technology. Each installation of Litium Studio is represented by a Web Site instance in Internet Information Server. Data is stored in one Microsoft SQL Server database per installation. Each installation also has a folder for file storage.
To handle an increased load and to provide for a fail-safe solution, further web fronts and a load-balancer can be added. All web fronts use the same database and are automatically synchronized and do not need to be aware of each other.
Modules
Litium Studio is a module-based platform. The three main modules are Web Publishing (WCM), Product Catalog (PIM) and E-Commerce. Main modules come in three editions: Express, Standard and Professional.
In addition to the main modules there are a number of supporting modules. Litium provides the following supporting modules: MediaArchive for file and media management, Newsletter for email and sms newsletters and Relations for e-CRM. Supporting modules only come in one edition. Customers and partners to Litium can create their own supporting modules through the Litium Studio API.
Add-ons
Add-ons are functionality which are added on top of modules or used to integrate with other systems. Add-ons are distributed either as licensed functionality (compiled code) or as source code. Customers and partners can create their own Add-ons. Litium provides a number of add-ons, some are free and some come with a license cost.
Add-ons are categorized as follows:
- Starter Sites: source code for page types, templates and web controls to quickly get started with a new web site. The Litium Studio release ships with a standard Starter Site.
- Page types and templates: source code for page types and templates for the Web Publishing module.
- Web Controls: source code for web controls for all modules.
- Language Packs: language packs for the admin user interface.
- Connectors: source code for integration with other systems - ERP, CRM and Print Solutions.
- Payment Providers: source code for building payment solutions.
- E-Commerce add-ons: source code and assemblies for additional campaign types, pricing rules, vat calculations, check out flows etc for the E-Commerce module.
Tasks
Use Tasks to run customer specific code at regular intervals or during startup. Tasks are commonly used to integrate with other systems trough batch operations. Simply add a custom Assembly with a class implementing a specific interface to the "bin"-folder and add a row in the Web.Config file describing when the task is to be executed.
Events
Most modules expose events through their API, e.g. events that fire when a page has been published or when an order has been placed. Events are standard .NET events with delegates. Simply add a startup-Task to Web.Config which creates a class listening to a specific event. Since events are triggered on each individual web front, the same event must be added to all web fronts where the events are to be catched.
Litium Foundation
Litium Foundation is the base API used by all modules. It handles accounts, permissions, security, languages, currencies, events and logging.
Architecture overview
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