Hybrid Architecture SDL WEB 8.5 and SDL Tridion Sites 9

Well, In my previous post we saw how we can use GraphQL with SDL WEB 8.5 by simply installing Tridion Sites 9 Content Service that will work isolated and read data from 8.5 Broker. But, this has some limitations I saw some difference in the Broker Database of 8.5 and Tridion 9.e:g The "Component Presentation" table has a new column CONTENT_ID in the Tridion 9 Broker. This field is not there in the 8.5 Broker and this caused an issue while accessing Dynamic Component Presentations using GraphQL.

To, sort any such issues which we might face, we discussed the new Hybrid approach where we will have the Tridion 9 Broker and State Store Database with Tridion 9 Services Discovery, Deployer, and Content service running parallelly with 8.5 CMS .

High-Level Architecture Diagram

1. Install Tridion 9 Broker and State_Store Database (As per the recommendation by SDL we need to install SQL Server 2016 SP2 or 2017).
2. Update storage configuration as per the new Tridion 9 DB details in the Tridion 9 Discovery, Deployer and Content service(These services could be on the same box or in a new) and then install the services.
3. After installation of service run the “java -jar discovery-registration.jar update” from discovery service config folder. This command will register the discovery service capabilities.
4. The above steps/command will set up the services for the content delivery environment.
5. Next is create a new topology manager in order to set the publishing
1. We need to keep 8.5 and Tridion 9 broker DB in sync. So that we can run existing  8.5 and at the same time we should be able to query Tridion 9 Broker DB using GraphQL.
2. We need targets that will publish to both the Brokers (e:g WEB8_Staging, Tridion9_Staging, WEB8_LIVE, and Tridion9_LIVE). This will keep the existing env. working and at the same time, we can use Graphql.
• WEB8_Staging will point WEB 8 Staging Discovery 
• Tridion9_Staging will point to Tridion 9 Staging Discovery
6. There is another advantage here, so when you MIGRATE from CM 8.5 to Tridion 9 you already have your Broker DB up-to-date, content delivery microservices are already working.

The above setup will let you continue with the 8.5 and it will also give us the privilege to use GraphQL as well.


Happy Coding and Keep Sharing !!!

OutScale Publishing in SDL Tridion

This was my topic in this year's SDL Tridion DX DEV India summit. We recently upgraded one of our client's system from SDL Tridion 2013 to SDL WEB 8.5, with more than 700 Websites and 200K items to publish, We need to build a system that supports the above scenarios with the high-performance rate.

So to maintain scalability we decided to use Deployer-Endpoint and Deployer-Worker rather than going with Deployer-Combined, we also used REDIS for Binary Storage and ActiveMQ for Massage queue/Notifications. Below is the Architecture Diagram.

Let understand the difference between Split Deployer and Deployer Combined

• Deployer Endpoint:- Receive the package sent by the Transport Service and index it in Binary Storage. 
• Deployer Worker:-  Process the package and saves the content in Broker DB or on the File System depending upon the configuration.  

Next, let's see how this architecture works step by step.

• Content is passed to the Deployer after a user Publishes an item in the CME.
• The Deployer Endpoint passes the Transport Package (.zip file) to the defined Binary Storage (File System or Redis Database). We are using Redis right now.
• The Deployer Endpoint also passes the item to the Queue in ActiveMQ (JMS).
• ActiveMQ triggers an event that informs the Worker Deployers that a new package has been received.
• The first available Worker Deployer picks up the job from the Queue and contacts the Binary Storage to get the respective Transport Package.
• After rendering the Transport Package the Worker Deployer passes the item to the Broker Database.
• The Deployer then gets the status of the job from the Broker Database, which is updated by the Worker Deployer responsible for that job.

Below is the screenshot of Redis Consumes the "Transport Package" and in the ActiveMQ we have "Queue/notifications" Enqueued and Dequeued.



 Happy Coding and Keep Sharing !!!

SDL India Tridion DX Summit 2019

Yet another successful, knowledgeable and full of fun SDL Tridion DX DEV Summit 2019,  where people from across the globe participated and shared their thoughts and knowledge.

I would like to thanks to the organizers SDL and all the sponsors and special thanks to all the members of the SDL India community, who made this event possible. People from the different regions joined in this event and shared their knowledge, experiences with others. The event was scheduled for 2 days, where more than 14 speakers participated and 16 sessions.

Highlights of this year SDL Tridion DX India Dev Summit   

Day 1, 29th March 2019

We started with celebrating the 10th anniversary of the MVP program where Sagar Hasamnis (Senior Director, SDL) presented his thoughts about this program and thanked the SDL community.

Jim Saunders (Chief Product Officer, SDL) Keynote speaker presented the vision and future of AI & The digital transformation of content he also demonstrates how this SDL helps us in the entire process from starting form Content Creator to Content Consumers.

After that, Ivo van de Lagemaat (Tridion DX Product Owner), he explained the SDL Tridion DX Roadmap and there was another session on the latest Extensions Management System where he explained the new Unified Extensions and its features, and how it will help in deployment and the best part is it will support the scale out. so if you have 2x CM and 4x Publishers it is a one-stop shop. I will be writing a separate blog on this starting with the Installation process, Features, and benefits.

Next speaker was Venu Ireddy (Solution Architect, SDL), Venu explained the features of DXA 2.1, and Search Module using Elastic Search and he also explained the difference between DXA 2.0 and 2.1.

After the amazing Lunch, it was Pankaj Gaur (Director, Content Bloom India) who started interacting with Audience with MentiMeter Game and then he presented how we can use SDL Tridion sites 9 feature Graphql with 8.5 also, we all loved it. 

The last two sessions were taken by Naveen (Senior Consultant, SDL)  presented the Tridion Docs, DD Module, and GUI using React and DXA  and Rajesh Kumar (Technical Architect, Global Solutions, SDL) presented the new Content API & GraphQL with React based Web application.

Day 2, 30th March 2019

SDL ecosystem from Wilhard Rass (VP Professional Services, SDL) gave us brief information about what is going on in the SDL Tridion world, what cloud service has to offer and about the Partners and their roles.

The Experience Manager DEMO and features this was explained by Venu Ireddy (Solution Architect, SDL). Content Editors are really going to like this new GUI.

After the first session on day 2, we decided to have some fun and we played “dumb-charade”.

Next, Presenter was Manish Mehmood(Technical Consultant, Content Bloom India), Manish showcase how to customize the exiting DXA Form Module.

I also got the opportunity to present and my topic was How to Scale-out Publishing in Tridion sites 9 using Split deployers (Deployers Endpoint, Deployer Workers, Redis, ActiveMQ).[here]

Mark Van der wal (Chief Architect Cloud Operations)  explained SDL cloud offerings, its advantages, and features.

Neetesh and Shalivahan (Technical Consultants, SDL) They explained the TridionDocs API integration this was the last session and we before all say goodbye, Event Closer by Sagar Hasamnis.   

Happy Coding and Keep Sharing!!

SDL Tridion Sites 9 Content API GraphQL with SDL WEB 8.5

Recently, One of our customers requested this, can we have new SDL Tridion Sites 9 feature GraphQL in SDL WEB 8.5. They have the following questions before we can proceed to POC.

The client is very excited about this new GraphQL feature as this will bring lots of improvement in their existing implementation. So, they wanted to know can we have this new feature in 8.5.

1. Can the CD side be upgraded to Sites 9 to have the GraphQL API, but the CM be left on Web 8.5?
2. Can only the content microservice be updated to Sites 9 (while leaving the Broker and Deployer on 8.5) 
3. Broker and Deployer also have to upgrade to 9?

We also need to think about downtown while we do all these. 

We did some investigation and come up with this idea/approach that we are not going to upgrade anything here just to have the new Content API feature (GraphQL).

So, We decided to Install only the Tridion Sites 9 Content Microservice and this will read the data from existing WEB 8.5 broker DB. NOTE:- We are still running the 8.5 services here no upgrade yet on CM or CD side.

With this approach, we were able to deliver what the client was requested from us. Now they are running their existing site using 8.5 content delivery and parallelly they started planning on building apps using 8.5 broker data using Tridion sites 9 GraphQL API. 

It was an interesting POC.

WEB 8.5 Content Service

Tridion Sites 9 Content Service running on same ENV and hitting 8.5 Broker to fetch the data.

Happy Coding and Keep Sharing !!!

SDL Tridion Sites 9 New Feature - GraphQL

The New SDL Tridion sites 9 Content API uses GraphQL. GraphQL is a data fetching and Query Language for APIs. It was created by Facebook in 2012 and was open sourced in 2015.

Advantages of GraphQL

1. Instead of making multiple endpoints call in REST version here in the just single endpoint we can get the data(JSON).
2. Documentation is available online [click]
3. Online Community support [click]

GraphQL can be used with multiple deceives, like Facebook developed this to power their mobile application.GraphQL can be used in any application, web application or mobile app many different programming languages support GraphQL [learn more].

So, let get back to the content API, when you install the content API you will see a new endpoint.

content API

Now, let run some query to get the data but first, we need to install GraphQL client tool, I have GraphiQL installed [download]

Let's run some sample queries.

Page content

Page

Component Presentation

Component Presentation 

Publication

Publication

To learn more, how to structure GraphQL queries the documentation about GraphQL query is available on SDL docs site you can refer that.[link]

Happy coding and keep sharing !!!

SDL Tridion Sites 9 with DXA 2.0 on Windows 10

On Wednesday 7th NOV, SDL Announces the new release SDL Tridion Sites 9 and I got this opportunity to explore this new version and today we are going to install the SDL Tridion 9 on Windows 10 (Not Recommended/supported by SDL though).

The first Step is Install Database by running the PowerShell scripts. I have MSSQL Server 2016 SP2 Developer Edition installed on my local machine and the following DBs are installed.

Next is run the SDLTridionSites9.exe installer but this time from the command line.

Once the step is finished successfully you would able to browse the SDL Tridion Sites 9.

SDL Tridion Sites 9

Next Step is Installed the Content Delivery Microservice and for that go to the installation media folder and navigate to \Content Delivery\resources\quickinstall

First, we need to update the setenv.ps1 and after the run the quickinstall.ps1 

setenv

After the quickinstall.ps1 stop executing go and check the windows services to confirm the service are installed properly and they are running as well.

Microservice

and last the discovery-registration.jar to update the capabilities.

So we finally able to install SDL Tridion Sites 9 and all Microservice on Windows 10 but we also need to updte the Topology Manager to be able to start Publishing and for that, we need to open PowerShell in Administrator mode and run the following command in the sequence.

 > Add-TtmCdTopologyType -Id "TOPOLOGYTYPEID" -Name "TOPOLOGYTYPENAME" -EnvironmentPurposes “PURPOSES”  
 > Add-TtmCdEnvironment -Id "CDENVIRONMENTID" -EnvironmentPurpose "CDENVIRONMENTPURPOSE" -DiscoveryEndpointUrl "DISCOVERYENDPOINTURL"   
 > Add-TtmCdTopology -Id "TOPOLOGYID" -Name "TOPOLOGYNAME" -CdTopologyTypeId "TOPOLOGYTYPEID" -CdEnvironmentIds "CDENVIRONMENTIDS"  
 > Add-TtmWebsite -Id "WEBSITEID" -CdEnvironmentId "CDENVIRONMENTID" -BaseUrls “BASEURLS”  

Once that is done you can create a dummy publication create BPT map that BPT with Topology Type, create SG and page and test publishing.

I've installed the latest DXA CMS import, Downloaded the DXA .NET Framework and we also need DXA-Model-Service from SDL official GitHub, after some tweak in the code I was able to run the DXA web application.

DXA CMS import

DXA WEB Application 

Happy coding and Keep Sharing !!!

SDL Tridion Sites 9

SDL Tridion DX combines the strengths of SDL Tridion Sites 9 web content management, SDL Tridion Docs, and SDL Language services.

New Features in SDL Tridion Sites 9

1. Headless Customer Experience 
2. Dynamic content mashups with taxonomies
3. Experience optimization 
4. Regions for easy management of content-rich web pages
5. Quick and easy image editing
6. GraphQL-based content service
7. Docker container support for flexible deployment
8. SAML 2.0 support for single sign-on
9. Alibaba Cloud support for websites in China
10. Staged and rolling scenarios for smoother upgrades

Upgrade to SDL Tridion Sites 9

Upgrading to Sites 9 is easier to upgrade and it reduces risk and costs with zero downtime. The upgrade is available from Tridion 2013 SP1 HR2 and up.

Pre-Requisites for SDL Tridion Sites 9 CM and CD side

1. Content Manager supports Microsoft Windows server 2016 x64, .NET Framework 4.7.2, Java 8. IIS 10
2. The Content Delivery side is also known as UDP (Unified Delivery Platform) requires Windows server 2016, Linux/RHEL 6.9 and 7.4, .NET Framework 4.7.2 and Java 8.
3. Both CM and CD databases support SQL Server Azure, Amazon RDS, MS SQL Server 2016 SP1 / 2017

Stay tuned for more updates on Tridion 9 !!!