LiveSite/SitePublisher thoughts/reviews?

Hello all - I would appreciate some honest LiveSite/SitePublisher thoughts/reviews. I have found very little to nothing on the Google.

Basically, we are a java shop and already have Websphere portal/personalization, and HP sales is pushing LiveSite/SitePublisher heavily.

I have had horrible experiences with other IWOV products outside of TeamSite (mediabin, metatagger) and really cant see the value or use in LiveSite/SitePublisher. Any thoughts/feedback would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

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Adam Stoller

I cannot provide an actual in-use review, as I've not dealt with implementing SP/LS much yet, though I've been at customer sites where they have done so - most often *with* WebSphere as the application server (so just because you use one doesn't mean you cannot use the other as well)

My take on it is that the strengths are in the realm of providing the users (content authors, and perhaps site/content managers) a nice framework in which to develop their content / pages for an application server driven web site.

The arguments for-and-against it are probably going to be more on the developer side than the user side; and thus I cannot really comment as I haven't done any development with SP/LS (nor, for that matter, any application server)

ProblemMeters.rptdesign

nipper

Hello all - I would appreciate some honest LiveSite/SitePublisher thoughts/reviews. I have found very little to nothing on the Google.

Basically, we are a java shop and already have Websphere portal/personalization, and HP sales is pushing LiveSite/SitePublisher heavily.

I have had horrible experiences with other IWOV products outside of TeamSite (mediabin, metatagger) and really cant see the value or use in LiveSite/SitePublisher. Any thoughts/feedback would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

I have had pretty decent luck with LS/SP. If you are a Java shop, that helps, and if you know XSL so much the better.

Many companies use Tomcat rather than WS/WLS but I know companies using both.

There are a number of large implementations using these products now.

Andy

Rick Poulin

Seconding fish+nipper's comments. I happen to like SitePub as a framework for authoring unstructured content -- it's very powerful if somewhat less sexy than its competitors -- but understanding what it is and what it isn't is the key to setting expectations, and thus is the deciding factor in whether your project will be successful. Yes, the HP stack plays a solid role in a complete solution but you need to be clear on what your use cases are and whether you need extra pieces (like true portal personalization versus content targeting). You should also evaluate what portion of your existing solution gets replaced by such an architecture and whether it's worth the ROI.

If you're not sure about whether the platform can achieve a given use case, you can ask here but obviously answers will assume a certain sandbox. If your solution is of the more complex variety, you should probably consider hiring HP ProServ or a well-versed third party to help you draw out what this would look like.

IWSWorkOrderDetails.rptdesign

ProblemMeters.rptdesign

Adam Stoller

[...] If your solution is of the more complex variety, you should probably consider hiring HP ProServ or a well-versed third party to help you draw out what this would look like.

Did you mean "Professional Services"?
There's a company out there hpproserv.com that is probably not what you're looking for, at least not for this:[indent] Professional unarmed and armed security guard service. We provide security guards for commercial and residential property, special events and conferences[/indent]And if you did mean HP Professional Services - I'm not sure that would count as a "third party"...

There used to be a Sales Engineering team that could come in, look at what you have and provide a reasonable demo of what you could get with additional product pieces - not sure if they still exist or if that is now subsumed by Professional Services.

Bowker

I will agree with all the above comments.

I have been working at the same company using TeamSite as an employee for about 15 years. I've seen the product morph a bit over the years, but the one thing I will say is you can build pretty much anything you want.

The very important part of that is "YOU CAN BUILD." TS/LS is, as mentioned before, a good framework to build what you want. You will have development costs.

The care and feeding of the system is (multiple servers) is not as simple as one would imagine.

Rick Poulin

Hah, yeah I did intend to abbreviate "professional services". Was not aware of the other company. Also, I didn't think I implied that HPPS were a third party (they sure aren't) but they're an option nonetheless.

Splitting hairs perhaps, but the goal of any 'sales engineering' team is to sell stuff. Sounds like they may be the people that OP is already dealing with. While not entirely impartial, the Professional Services team may be better suited to do a more thorough analysis of the requirements rather than building demos and POCs, so I would personally have more confidence in that. Of course, I think going with a third party is even better, but we here are all a bit impartial on that one too Smiley Happy

Adam Stoller

[...]Splitting hairs perhaps, but the goal of any 'sales engineering' team is to sell stuff. [...]

Well yes - but "back in the day" there was a "Sales" team and a "Sales Engineering" team - the former just wanted to sell stuff without any real understanding of the customer's environment, the latter at least tried to understand the customer's environment to tailor the sales pitch along reasonably plausible technical aspects. Perhaps the Professional Services team does that now?

Rick Poulin

Perhaps the Professional Services team does that now?

AFAIK, they also do health checks and product installs/upgrades, but yeah it sounds like we're talking about a label change to some extent.

Scott Snead

thanks all - really appreciate the feedback - after doing some digging it appears the name SitePublisher is no longer being used? now the products appear to be called "LiveSite Display Services" and "LiveSite Content Services"...

either way, a few additional questions:

1) are MediaBin or MetaTagger required for LiveSite?
2) can LiveSite play nicely with multiple IBM websphere portal servers? I'm still confused as to whether its redundant functionality or more of a plugin/module? they seem to be pushing it more of a microsite/campaign generation tool to our marketing team. it sounds to me like its almost its own application server?
3) bowker mentioned development and support. does LiveSite use pure Java code? or something proprietary a la FormAPI?

Interwoven/Autonomy/HP saying "you can build it" scares me - they told my previous employer TeamSite integrates great with .net...and by that they meant using .tpls to write out C# code, which is perhaps the worst practice ever imo.

nipper

thanks all - really appreciate the feedback - after doing some digging it appears the name SitePublisher is no longer being used? now the products appear to be called "LiveSite Display Services" and "LiveSite Content Services"...

Actually SP is the development environment LSDS/LSCS are runtime environments.

either way, a few additional questions:

1) are MediaBin or MetaTagger required for LiveSite?

They are integrated with but not required for TeamSite/SitePublisher

2) can LiveSite play nicely with multiple IBM websphere portal servers? I'm still confused as to whether its redundant functionality or more of a plugin/module? they seem to be pushing it more of a microsite/campaign generation tool to our marketing team. it sounds to me like its almost its own application server?

LSDS is a Webapp that fits inside WAS. I have not used it on WPS, though it should not make a difference.

It is certainly not a microsite tool, there are major sites using it.

3) bowker mentioned development and support. does LiveSite use pure Java code? or something proprietary a la FormAPI?

Development for SP is Java/XSL. However many people use DCRs to feed content to LSDS, so you will probably write some FormAPI - though I do not see that as proprietary.

Interwoven/Autonomy/HP saying "you can build it" scares me - they told my previous employer TeamSite integrates great with .net...and by that they meant using .tpls to write out C# code, which is perhaps the worst practice ever imo.

LSDS works on Java with a App Server (Tomcat, WAS, WLS, etc) but also supports .Net stack (though it is certainly different).

Rick Poulin

My two cents, adding to nipper's comments..

can LiveSite play nicely with multiple IBM websphere portal servers?

This comes back to defining exactly what you want LiveSite to provide for you. If you've got a mature implementation of personalization requirements, then LiveSite would be a webapp that renders content for you, and would be one of potentially multiple data inputs to your portal.

It is certainly not a microsite tool, there are major sites using it.

LiveSite began life as a solution for microsites, so some of its design still kinda makes a bit more sense in that world. But as nipper said, myself and others have successfully built websites with it that have tens of thousands of pages.

bowker mentioned development and support. does LiveSite use pure Java code? or something proprietary a la FormAPI?

You're already a Java shop, so think of it this way. LiveSite is no more than an MVC application where Spring is the underlying framework and LiveSite (DS) is just another Java library. The main difference is that your view layer is pages and components rather than JSP/JSF/whatever. The rest of the stack opens up to do whatever you'd normally want to do in java apps. LSCS is basically a NoSQL database to support this stack.

LSDS works on Java with a App Server (Tomcat, WAS, WLS, etc) but also supports .Net stack (though it is certainly different).

..and it's not like TPLs creating ASP code. They actually have a DLL-level integration with LiveSite, though I can't comment much more on how that all works out as I'm not a .NET guy... AFAIK it does still end up running Java at some point, so you get a bit of a mixed bag there.

Scott Snead

good stuff guys - thank you very much. this will definitely help in our evaluation

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Garth McMillan

..and it's not like TPLs creating ASP code. They actually have a DLL-level integration with LiveSite, though I can't comment much more on how that all works out as I'm not a .NET guy... AFAIK it does still end up running Java at some point, so you get a bit of a mixed bag there.

From memory, it uses IKVM (http://www.ikvm.net/) as a wrapper.