Concepts for EPiServer

Concepts for EPiServer adds semantic technology to EPiServer CMS to provide improved Taxonomy management, concept pages, data publishing and open data endpoints.

Concepts for EPiServer (CfE) integrates with the Networked Planet Web3 Platform to enhance EPiServer CMS. CfE allows editors to create a domain data model and use that as a way to organise and classify EPiServer content.

Domain models can range from a simple taxonomy of terms through to a complete knowledge model of the business or organisation.

In EPiServer, editors use new classification property types to connect pages to Concepts being managed in the Web3 Platform.

These concepts are exposed on the website and can show links to other EPiServer pages and to other related concepts.

The concept driven approach creates a more natural way for users to navigate and find content in EPiServer.

As well as concept pages for humans to navigate by CfE exposes data endpoints to allow EPiServer data to be accessed by machines.

All concepts and normal EPiServer pages now expose an RDF representation of the data behind them. This allows EPiServer content to be consumed more easily by other applications using simple web requests.

As well as the RDF representations the Web3 data is also accessible via a SPARQL endpoint. This allows the core domain model to be accessed and used by other applications.

Use Cases

1. Taxonomy Support in EPiServer The most simple use case is the addition of a powerful taxonomy management system.

Using the power of the Web3 platform it is quick and easy to build, define and maintain a multi-lingual, synonym based taxonomy structure. This structure can contain broader and narrower terms, and also cross cutting related terms.

In EPiServer, editors can easily connect pages to one or more taxonomy terms. Each term can be rendered through a concept page. The concept page can show links to other EPiServer pages and also to connected taxonomy terms.

2. Exposing Master Data via EpiServer Quite often an organisation has a data set that is to be used in multiple ways. This 'Master Data' such as list of people, products, categories can be stored and managed in the Web3 Platform. The Web3 Platform is a pure data management system which can be accessed and updated via UI tools and a rich service API.

CfE allows the concepts being managed in the Web3 Platform to be connected to EPiServer pages. Each page can either be connected to one or more concepts or a page may be act as the rendering point for a given concept.

Different types of concept can be rendered differently by EPiServer templates. These concept pages can show links to other concept pages or to EPiServer pages.

3. Creating a powerful navigation structure. It is often necessary to create navigation structures that do not mirror the EPiServer page hierarchy. It is also often desirable to have multiple ways for users to reach the same piece of content.

CfE allows developers and editors to create and render graph like data structures that are separate from the EPiServer pages. This allows multiple navigation structures and non-hierarchal structures to be used to organise and navigate the content.

4. EPiServer as a Data Platform. EPiServer is primarily concerned with publishing HTML web pages. But the demands of customers is that the same content should be more easily accessible in a form that can be accessed by machines.

CfE exposes the power of the underlying Web Platform. Allowing all concept pages and EPiServer pages to be retrieved via the same URL as RDF or by allowing RDFa to be embedded into the page.

As well as exposing RDF representations for all pages CfE also allows clients to execute SPARQL queries to fetch and retrieve data.

These features turn EPiServer from being a web page publishing system to being a fully fledged data publishing system.