bboard is an ACS application package built to provide
scalable discussion forums to a community of users. As in older
versions, bboard provides:
The ACS 4.0 version of bboard is a re-engineering of
the data model and presentation layer without certain capabilities
present in the ACS 3.4 bboard. In future releases we intend to
achieve the same level of maturity as the older bboard
while building on the flexibility of the new design.
bboard is not intended to be the ultimate
customizable web based discussion system. It is intended to be a
practical and useful system that supports forums much like the
photo.net Q&A forum. Publishers with special needs are encouraged to
implement their solution as a module, much like bboard, built atop the
framework acs-messaging provides.
acs-messaging is a general purpose component that
provides threaded messaging services to higher level applications such
as bboard. The motivation is to provide a base level
data model and reusable presentation code that enables the rapid
customization of messaging applications. acs-messaging is intended to
simplify modules like general comments and
webmail, as well as specialized messaging applications
such as scorecard's geospatial
bboard. Such a framework keeps custom organizational metadata,
pageflow and navigation, and publishing and moderation policy separate
from the basic tools needed for discussion.
bboard has grown to
encompass a wide variety of functionality. Much of this functionality
was developed first for bboard and only later adapted
into more general mechanisms (e.g. alerts, security, group scoping,
etc.,). However bboard wasn't refactored to take
advantage of the more general facilities, and its complexity
challenged those in need of custom features. Furthermore there was a
lot of ad hoc mechanism in both the data model and page flow to
support different presentation styles, navigation schemes, and access
control models. Although this bboard proved to be
useful, scalable, and reliable, the ability to maintain and extend
this code suffered.
The ACS 4.0 release of bboard mimics the basic functionality of older
bboard versions but built atop new ACS 4.0 general
mechanisms (objects, persmissions, templating, acs-messaging,
etc.,). .
How does one reconcile all the possible discussion forums mentioned
above into a single module? One does not! bboard is
precisely one way to implement a discussion forum and should not be
all things. In time, there should be a toolkit of components (user
interface, data model, and procedural) for developers to assemble
their custom.
Although many of the entities in the data model are implemented as subtyples of ACS object, we avoid using information from the ACS object table for anything but auditing purposes. For example, we could store a message's author in the ACS object creation_user field, however to keep query performance in line we rather use the author field in acs_messages.
As of the initial ACS 4.0 release, acs-messaging and
bboard do not provide well defined programming
interfaces.
Although convenience functions will be provided for basic
transactions on the acs-messaging and bboard
entities, it remains to be seen what sort of abstraction layer is most
appropriate.
acs-messaging defines the view
acs_messages_all for the storage and access of threaded
text messages and assorted information relevant to their display,
access, and creation. Under the covers acs-messaging use the
content repository for underlying storage.
bboard uses acs-messaging messages, and
organizes them into forums and categories. For the purposed of the
ACS permissions system, forums contain messages, and so any
permissions on a forum will default to being inherited for individual
messages.
A forum may be designated as moderated, in which case explicit
approvals or denials are stored in the
bboard_message_moderation. Messages without entries in
the moderation table are considered unseen, and will be displayed or
hidden in moderated forums based on policy.
Each forum may have some number of categories, tags denoting further specialization within a forum. Messages of a forum may be tagged as being in any of the categories pertaining to that forum.
The long explanation:
BBoard defines the following permissions:
Much of the functionality of the ACS content repository will
eventually provide tangible benefits to bboard and any
acs-messaging application. Foremost among these features
will be full text searching and rich media attachments.
When ACS provides a general mechanism for an installation to send and
receive email, bboard can provide email alerts and
email based reply and post.
| Document Revision # | Action Taken, Notes | When? | By Whom? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Creation | 09/01/2000 | Anukul Kapoor |
| 0.2 | Revision | 09/19/2000 | Anukul Kapoor |