What are Component Content Management Systems?

Content management Systems are used in several contexts today.  Be it a full scale Enterprise that needs to organize its operational and statistical data or someone who wants to quickly and easily setup and manage a website without diving into the details of web programming, Content Management Systems has found their way into several different application areas. Based on the usage context of CMS, it is termed as an Enterprise CMS or a Web CMS.

A CMS typically comprises of two types of modules: Content Management Application (CMA) which enables the content author, who may not be adept in the use of the web programming language like HTML, to easily manage the creation, editing and removal of website content and Content Delivery Application (CDA), which uses the same information to update the Website.

There exists a third important CMS type known as Component Content Management System. Not much information is available about these CMS systems as they are relatively a new concept.

A component content management system deals with the content within documents. It locates and links content in any level of organization in a fragmented system of contents, and then builds publications out of these fragments of content. After the content has been formulated, it is usually delivered using the web content management and enterprise content management systems to the end user.

Traditionally, CMSs have been focusing on managing data in document form. Though such systems have the capacity of efficiently storing data in document base, such data is useful only if it needs to be retrieved as a whole. However, these systems are limited, rather unsuitable when the need arises for more granular access within the document.

CCMSs are most useful when content is regularly updated and redundant. Managing such content using traditional methods can yield high maintenance costs. For example, airlines systems are a good place to put CCMSs to use as these systems need to update their data frequently. Similarly, CCMSs can also be used to manage tailor-made publications in publication houses. Complex products and services tend to have complex documentation. These services are based on common structures. Hence, the corresponding documentations can be easily constructed from the same base documentation. So in this case too, CCMSs suit better to the requirements of the target system.

Though these are not very frequently used today, CCMSs can be used to significantly improve the efficiencies in various content management scenarios, especially where document redundancy and updates are frequently found.