~~DISCUSSION~~

====== ProfileManager ======


===== System Overview =====

=== iNEWS without the ProfileManager ===

This is a short explanation of how and where iNEWS stores a users' profile information. The explanation is necessary to understand how the ProfileManager works.

Profile information are stored in the iNEWS database. After the user closes the iNEWS client toolbar layouts, user preferences and sessions are sent to the iNEWS server and stored in a special region of the database. When the iNEWS client is started again with the same user, it downloads these information from the database and presents the program window according to the user profile settings.

But the iNEWS client can also be used with a local database only. In this case there is no connection to any iNEWS server. For not loosing user changed settings when closing the iNEWS client, it always stores the user profile into the Windows Registry too. If iNEWS is started with a local database again it will load the user profile from the Windows registry. The iNEWS client can also be forced to load the user profile from the registry even if it is connected to the iNEWS server. 

Starting the iNEWS client with the program argument registryprefs will cause the profile to be loaded from the Windows registry.

=== iNEWS with ProfileManager ===

The previous paragraph has explained that iNEWS stores the profile of a user into the Windows registry. The iNEWS client can also be forced to load the profile of a user from the registry. The ProfileManager basically works with these two iNEWS features. To get a users profile the profile information can be exported from the Windows registry after the user closed the iNEWS client. The profile information can be saved somewhere else and if the same user wants to log in again she can chose one of the previously saved profiles available. After the user chose a profile the ProfileManager writes this profile into the Windows registry and forces iNEWS to start using the profile from the registry.

{{products:profilemanager-lifecycle.jpg|}}

To store the profile after it has been exported from the Windows registry the ProfileManager uses the iNEWS database itself. The ProfileManager expects the home directory of the user to have a profiles queue. Each story in this queue is expected to be a profile.

After opening the ProfileManager the user has to enter its user name first. Then the ProfileManager will open a connection to iNEWS, go into the profiles queue of the given user and present each story as a profile to chose. After the user has chosen a profile the ProfileManager will download this profile, store it in the Windows registry and start iNEWS with the option to load the profile from registry. When the user logs in to iNEWS the layout will be according to the profile. Any changes to the layout are saved in the Windows registry after the user closed the iNEWS client. The ProfileManager is waiting in the background for iNEWS to close. After the profile has been written to the registry the ProfileManager reads the profile out of the registry and updates the profile in the profile queue of the user.

The keyboard information for a profile is not saved in the registry. The keyboard information is written into the profile story by the administrator. After the ProfileManager downloaded a given profile and wrote it into the Windows registry the keyboard number is extracted from the profile. This keyboard number must now be set on the iNEWS server for the given user. Therefore the ProfileManager opens an FTP connection to the file system of the iNEWS server and stores the keyboard information on the iNEWS server as a file in a certain directory. A utility program delivered with the ProfileManager is scanning this directory, reads the incoming keyboard information files and sets the given keyboard for the given user.

==== System Requirements ====

  * Windows XP

  * Java 6

  * .NET Runtime Environment 2.0

  * Privilege to open a FTP connection to the iNEWS server (database as well as OS)


===== Versions =====

==== ProfileManager 2.0 ====

  * Added support for iNEWS 2.6 and Unicode

  * Automatic update of Profile stories after closing the iNEWS session

  * Migrated from C++ to Java/C#

==== ProfileManager 1.5 ====

  * Not a productive release

==== ProfileManager 1.0 ====

  * Initial version



===== Links =====

Some of the following links are restricted to specific users. Read the overview on page [[:welcome|Welcome]] who has which permissions.

[[bugs-features:profilemanager|Bugs & Features]]

[[downloads:profilemanager|Downloads ProfileManager 2.0 and higher]]

[[forum:profilemanager|Forum]]


===== Roadmap =====


  * Release of ProfileManager 2.1 is planned for QIII 2008. The keyboard utility on the iNEWS server then is implemented as a Java service connected via RMI.

  * ProfileManager 2.2 will contain an Administrator interface to manage Profiles. It is planned for late 2008 /early 2009.


===== References =====


These broadcasters already use the ProfileManager:

  * Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg - [[http://www.rbb-online.de|RBB]]


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