Key concepts

Assets

In censhare, information is stored and managed in assets. censhare uses different types of assets to store each type of information. For example, images are stored in image assets, layouts are stored in layout assets. The information in the asset can include asset details (properties) and asset content. Assets content can be files, for example, media files such as images, videos, or 3D models. Or assets can contain a set of data. For example, product specifications.

Relations

In addition to assets, relationships are one of the most important instruments for organizing information in censhare. They reflect the relationships between individual assets.

A relation shows the link between two assets and provides information about the type of relation. An "Assignment" type relation, for example, is a general statement basically saying: These two assets have something to do with each other. Relations can also express other facts. For example, an "Author" type relation specifically says that an asset - in this case, a person - is also the author of another asset - in this case, an article.

Server

The Application Server provides the domain logic for asset management. It is a stand-alone application running on Java Runtime Environment. The Application Server can scale horizontally for load balancing and high availability.

Clients

censhare provides several different client applications that allow users to connect to the server, find and manipulate data and execute tasks within the system. There are clients for end-users (censhare Client, censhare Web, and censhare WP - depending on the technical infrastructure), a client for administrative tasks (censhare Admin Client) and two clients that remote control external processes by simulating user behavior (censhare Render Client and censhare Service Client).

All censhare clients are language-neutral, which means, that the user interface language is not built into the application, but loaded from the server upon user login.

Services

The Application Server provides about 40 built-in services that provide the censhare core functionality. For example for images, the database, the filesystem, or Email functionality.

Modules

About 350 modules provide specific functions. For example, convert images, find duplicate assets, update server actions, or clean up the database.

Master data

The master data define the data framework of the censhare platform. Master data populate the database before the system startup. The censhare platform comes with a standard set of master data that makes the system operational. For a production system, the master data must be configured accordingly.

Master data comprise the following areas:

• Governance: Domains, roles, permissions, permission sets, users, user groups, user settings.
• Asset data: Asset types, asset relations, asset applications, features (asset properties), feature category group assignments, feature groups, feature types, feature value relations.
• Asset lifecycle: Asset versions, workflows, workflow states, events.
• Production data: External applications, colors, formats, file types, MIME types, image crops, image resolutions, languages, translation abbreviations, regions (print), units, unit sets.
• Organization: Regions, holidays.
• System: Application servers, file system, file system replications, external applications, client versions, schedule types.

There are two ways to edit, add, or disable master data:

In the censhare Admin Client, you can access all master data configurations directly. This is appropriate only for development, staging, or test systems.

Via an XML import, you can change or add any master data configuration. This is appropriate to transfer or update master data on production systems.

Module assets

Module assets are a main source of the censhare system configuration. For example, workspace Module assets describe the setup of user workspaces. censhare comes with preconfigured Module assets that are needed to operate the server.

Resource keys

The resource key of an asset is used to uniquely identify a resource asset in a censhare system. It is stored in a text field as an asset feature. censhare uses resource keys to identify system assets.

Transformations

Transformation offers a flexible and powerful way to transform any kind of data into another form or structure. In censhare, transformations are used to customize the censhare system to customers' needs.

As censhare has its own implementation of XSLT and XPath, you are able to access the data in censhare and transform it in any possible way.