Darren Farley, technical writer from Sitecore wrote me answers to some of my questions on upcoming features.

About 3 databases

The new version of Sitecore has significantly less databases than in previous versions. Previous versions had 7 now there are only 3. The Core, Master and Web Databases are the only databases in the latest version of Sitecore.

The “Sitecore” and “Extranet” security databases were removed as they are now handled by the .NET security model and stored in standard tables.

The “Archive” and “Recycle bin” databases were removed as each database now has its own internal archive and recycle bin storage areas. The archive and recycle bin have also been enhanced to contain a search facility similar to the content editor.

He also wrote something about “Page Editor”

The old “WebEdit” has been completely replaced with in-line editing. This feature, called the “Page Editor”, brings a whole new level of functionality and ease of use to the web site. In its simplest form it will allow users with limited It skills to directly edit text and images on a web page directly without any knowledge of Sitecore architecture, whilst in the background all the items, workflow procedures and security that goes into editing items within the Sitecore framework are all still followed. Items still get locked and unlocked, and an item will move through a workflow in the same manner as if it was being edited in the Content Editor.

Branch Templates and Command Templates, this is completely new for me.

What was referred to in Sitecore 5 as “Templates” are now called “Data Templates” in Sitecore 6. Assigning a data template to an item means that content authors will be allowed to create items directly from the assigned template. To further expand the functionality of templates and facilitate the removal of Masters Sitecore has created two new template types. The first is the Branch Template, which allows the creation of a whole series of items to create a part of a content tree when item creation is invoked. The second is Command Templates which allows a class and method to be called to invoke a programmed operation to be performed during item creation ( i.e. invoking a wizard to collect data).

More info about ASP.NET security on Sitecore six

Sitecore 6 replaces the standard Sitecore security model with the .NET security model. This provides the security infrastructure with a variety of enhancements, which are:

· The standard ASP.NET way of handling security.

· The ability to use plug and play security providers from Microsoft.

· Abstraction of data from the real data source.

· An easy option to replace or extend the default configuration with your own custom security providers.

· The possibility of using several providers simultaneously and thus keeping the accounts in identifiable storage areas.

The security model has been enhanced to allow roles in roles, a feature that is not available in the standard .NET security model.

These enhancements serve to allow the security of the Sitecore client to handle a lot more users, roles and domains than previously. Along with the new feature of roles in roles this serves to allow for scalability enhancements to support large scale security repositories.

Christopher Wojciech reveleals more details about new Page Editor in Sitecore on his blog.

The post really doesn’t tell much but definetly new inline editor is there but from screenshots I cannot really make comments if it’s good. When looking screenshots on the blog post looks like there is less changes than I though there will be. I am still looking for a comments about speed of editor rendering times and speed of changing simple things on content. I think speed in the current Sitecore is the biggest bottleneck for editors.

I have not seen V6 yet but I have been looking closely blogs and discussions on Sitecore Developer Network about the upcoming version of Sitecore 6 that will Rock every CMS developer world :O

Features known and my predections so far:

• There are only 3 databases (Core, Master and Web).
  Sitecore V5 has 7, I like this simplicity but I am curious to see solution on Sitecore Security.
• .net 2.0 to .net 3.5
  IMHO: Not a big fun on LINQ but all other updates are very welcome!
• Completely reworked webedit
  I predect this will be the biggest update of all. If they are able to roll out proper “edit in place” this product will take everyone under the table.
• New GUI
  Not really sure this will happen but I hope they have removed Vista look and goes more Office metaphor on Shell.
• No more Master templates, standard values rules.
  If you are not Sitecore developer you have no idea what the heck I am talking about but this is good.
• Security concept based on the .net membership provider.
  Makes easier implementation to LDAP’s. I have been missing that on Sitecore.
• XSLT extension controls: The WebEditRibbon and the StringUtil.
  I am not sure what are these but I am sure I will fall in love with WebEditRibbon. Please please Sitecore let me place and design my own Add/Edit/Delete buttons
• AJAX included automatically
  Not really sure which library, I hope it will be effortless to implement my own AJAX library.

ps: Just notice myself my blog URL says /v6/ that has nothing to do with Sitecore just the coincidence. This blog runs on WordPress and v6 stands for version of my website. I have had homepage since 1997 and last time I updated was in 2005 where I made Wordpress installation to to v6 folder…

Sorting Sitecore data to multicolumn html table is quite hard in XSLT because data in XML is not sorted by item/@sortorder.

I finally found out how to do this so it will actually work and I am not loosing data. The trick is creating data first into a flat XML Nodeset and looping this data then to a multicolumn table using following-sibling::item commands. Here is the small sample code for this where I take abstract content structure from the Sitecore to a XML Nodeset <ul><li>xxxxxx</li></ul>.

First let’s make a variable.

<xsl:variable name=”keywords”>
<ul>
<xsl:for-each select=”$keywords”>
<xsl:for-each select=”descendant-or-self::item[(@template='keywords')]“>
<li>
<xsl:value-of select=”sc:fld(‘text’,.)”/>
</li>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:for-each>
</ul>
</xsl:variable>

Then using msxsl:node-set -function (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hz88kef0(vs.71).aspx) I create nodeset out of the XSL variable and loop data to the html table.

<table>
<xsl:for-each select=”msxsl:node-set($keywords)/ul/li[position() mod 3 = 1]“>
<tr>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select=”.”/>
</td>
<xsl:for-each select=”following-sibling::li[position() < 3]“>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select=”.”/>
</td>
</xsl:for-each>
</tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>

I would be very keen to know if you have done this in pure XSLT because msxsl:node-set seems to be quite slow.