OpenWGA is Web Content Management computer software

Computer software

Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....

 running on the Java Enterprise Edition Platform. It is used to build, manage and publish websites and content-centric web applications. The system is developed and maintained by German company Innovation Gate GmbH.

Components and Editions of the CMS platform

The central part of the platform is the OpenWGA Server, a web server process responsible for publishing web applications. It itself is a web application of the Java Enterprise Edition Platform and is available in two editions:

• The Community Edition contains the content publishing engine, support for storing content data on MySQL
  MySQL
  MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
  
  , PostgreSQL
  PostgreSQL
  PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
  
   and HSQLDB
  HSQLDB
  HSQLDB is a relational database management system written in Java. It has a JDBC driver and supports a large subset of SQL-92 and SQL:2008 standards. It offers a fast, small database engine which offers both in-memory and disk-based tables...
  
   databases and includes basic capabilities for user authentication. It is licensed as Open Source Software under GNU GPLv3 or higher and usable without fee. A special exception to the GNU GPL allows distribution of custom-licensed OpenWGA plugins along with the OpenWGA server.

• The Enterprise Edition builds upon the Community Edition to add support for database platforms (Microsoft SQL Server
  Microsoft SQL Server
  Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database server, developed by Microsoft: It is a software product whose primary function is to store and retrieve data as requested by other software applications, be it those on the same computer or those running on another computer across a network...
  
  , IBM DB2
  IBM DB2
  The IBM DB2 Enterprise Server Edition is a relational model database server developed by IBM. It primarily runs on Unix , Linux, IBM i , z/OS and Windows servers. DB2 also powers the different IBM InfoSphere Warehouse editions...
  
  , Oracle Database
  Oracle Database
  The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....
  
  ), user authentication systems (LDAP directory servers, multiple shared authentication) and external data sources (CMIS
  Content Management Interoperability Services
  Content Management Interoperability Services is a specification for improving interoperability between Enterprise Content Management systems. OASIS, a web standards consortium, approved CMIS as an OASIS Specification on May 1, 2010....
  
   repositories, Lotus Domino Databases) that are considered "enterprise grade" by the product creators. It consists of the GPL licensed community edition plus a custom-licensed "Enterprise Plugin" containing the additional features. Access to the Enterprise Edition is available via a paidd subscription model by Innovation Gate GmbH.

Another part of the platform is the OpenWGA developer studio, an Integrated development environment

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

 for developing and testing OpenWGA web applications, based on the Eclipse IDE framework

Eclipse (software)

Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...

.

History

OpenWGA was long time developed under the name of WGA and was by this time a commercial Web Content Management System only available to the German market. With releasing it under Open Source License it was rebranded to OpenWGA. The acronym originally stood for "WebGate Anywhere", containing a reference to the predecessor software "Webgate", a CMS running on the IBM Lotus Domino

IBM Lotus Domino

Lotus Domino is an IBM server product that provides enterprise-grade e-mail, collaboration capabilities, and a custom application platform. Domino began life as Lotus Notes Server, the server component of Lotus Development Corporation's client-server messaging technology. It can be used as an...

 Platform. The WGA/OpenWGA software has no connection with Windows Genuine Advantage

Windows Genuine Advantage

Windows Genuine Advantage is an anti-piracy system created by Microsoft that enforces online validation of the licensing of several recent Microsoft Windows operating systems when accessing several services, such as Windows Update, and downloading Windows components from the Microsoft Download...

, also known as WGA.

Release	Version	Enhancements
2001	1.0	No complete CMS but merely a Java-based interface server for adding content data to CMS "WebGate" via third party authoring clients like Microsoft Word Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...  and other office products
2002	2.0	Complete CMS server on J2EE platform storing content (and design) data in Lotus Domino Databases
2003	2.1	New administrative tools: "WGA Admin Page" for monitoring and "WGA Manager" (Java Webstart Application) for configuring the server; Introduction of WebTML actions
February 2004	2.2	First version of WebTML portlet framework; Switching data interface for Lotus Domino to DIIOP CORBA protocol instead of "native interface", fixing various resource exhaustion problems
July 2004	3.0	Introduction of content storage for relational database systems; Reworked Browser Authoring Interface; WebTML forms
December 2004	3.1	WGA Scheduler; Incremental Content Store Synchronisation
2005	3.2	Integrated Lucene fulltext index; TMLScript overhaul; ACL Roles
2006	3.3	External storage of designs in design directories; Design sharing; WebTML forms and labels
2007	4.0	Focus on Web application development; WGA Plugins architecture; Modernization of WebTML portlet framework incl. AJAX functionality; OpenWGA Content Manager replaces "Browser Authoring Interface"; WGA Design Assistant allows configuration of WGA design directories
2008	4.1	Optimized content file handling with resource-neutral fetching of large file data; Addressing content via human-readable title path URLs
April 2010	5.0	Release as OpenWGA Community Edition under GPL; Refactored and simplified administrative model including new OpenWGA admin client; OpenWGA developer studio; Content relations; Exposure to international market
August 2010	5.1	Pluggable language behaviour; Beginning Drag&Drop support in OpenWGA Content Manager; Externalize serving of large files to HTTP server
November 2010	5.2	CMIS Content Management Interoperability Services Content Management Interoperability Services is a specification for improving interoperability between Enterprise Content Management systems. OASIS, a web standards consortium, approved CMIS as an OASIS Specification on May 1, 2010....  connectivity; Support for PostgreSQL databases; Image editing features inside OpenWGA Content Manager
March 2011	5.3	Content modules; Virtual Hosts; Search Engine Optimizations
July 2011	5.4	Plugin Store; Inheritable read access restrictions for pages; Content Module Templates; Customizable application designs

Content management characteristics

OpenWGA provides the following characteristic features known in content management and publishing:

• Hierarchically organized, versionable, multi language content in a freely definable structure
• Storage of binary content data along with content
• Automatic fulltext indexing of content
• Browser-based WYSIWYG content authoring
• Configurable read/write authorisations on multiple levels: Application, Hierarchy, Document
• Approval Workflow
• Web service access to content data via CMIS, SOAP and WebDAV
• Synchronisation of Content Data across servers
• User personalisation via individual user profiles

Template / Application development

OpenWGA uses its own templating languages called WebTML and TMLScript. WebTML is a syntax of XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

-formatted tags, prefixed with "tml:", that mark dynamic parts of page templates, providing mainly data output and flow control beside offering higher level features. TMLScript is an expression language used to specify expressions and define routines in WebTML that complies to the rules of JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

Version 1.6.

The following example demonstrates the usage of WebTML and TMLScript (inside the "condition" atttribute) in a HTML page template: