MCS repositories

MCS policies are contained in repositories. Local repositories take two forms.

MCS policies are contained in repositories. Local repositories take two forms.

• The XML repository contains design time policy information. You'll use this repository to design and test policies.

  Layout, policies, theme and device policies are automatically implemented as a set of individual XML files in a project's contents directory. When you work with policies in the Mobile Portal Toolkit interface, you use wizards or policy editors create or edit XML files in the background.

  The single-file device repository is largely maintained from an online device update service. It also has an interface for adding any new devices or custom device policies required by your application.

• For design time collaborative working, or better runtime performance you can use a JDBC repository. Collaborative working uses a database so that team members can manage locks on individual policies or policy variants. If the database is used only at runtime, your system administrator will import all the XML policy data for the application into a database when policy development is complete.

You can also make use of policy information in a remote repository. A remote repository contains policy information served from a remote server. It can include policies created and maintained in the Mobile Portal Toolkit workbench and exported to a remote location, or content from external systems. MCS can be configured to access the remote server, and you can use URLs on this server in your policies. At runtime, the remote server will retrieve the policy information from the URL.

A single local repository can contain multiple projects. In an XML repository a project is the root directory that contains the policies. In a database repository the project is part of the primary key to each table. So to retrieve a policy from a given project you need to specify the project as part of the policy identity.