Administer > Manage WebSphere Commerce features > Workspace Administration Tool > Workspaces
Author server
An authoring server is a staging server that has workspaces enabled. Business users use an authoring server to control site changes.
- Assign work
- Send notifications
- Executing site changes to product, content, promotions and campaigns
- Preview changes
- Approve changes
- Schedule when changes go into production
An authoring server consists of the following components:
- A WCS instance
- Contains all the code, HTML files, JSP files, and other files required to run a store and the WebSphere Commerce tools.
- Workspace database schemas
- Each workspace on an authoring server has its own database schema. The database schemas for workspaces are separate from the production-ready data database schema. This keeps changes made in a workspace isolated from other workspaces and the database schema for the production-ready data.
- Production-ready data
- Contains the same database schema and tables as the production database, plus a set of triggers to log changes made to specific tables in the production-ready data. For a list of tables that have triggers enabled, refer to List staging or authoring server-managed tables.
Changes are logged to the STAGLOG table (a staging table) using database triggers. Whenever you change a database table record in the production-ready data, the STAGLOG table records this change. For each modified record, a trigger records the type of modification (insert, delete, or update), the name of the table where the record resides, and the record's primary key or unique index.
- stagingcopy utility
- Allows an administrator to copy data from the production database to the production-ready data. You can copy the data into multiple site-related staged tables, multiple merchant-related stages tables, all staged tables, or individual site-related or merchant-related staged tables.
The stagingcopy utility should only be used in specific administrative situations, such as setting up a new authoring server or recovering from corrupt production-ready data. An administrator should not make day-to-day changes on the production server and routinely use the stagingcopy utility to copy the data to the authoring server.
- stagingprop utility
- Allows an administrator to publish changes from the production-ready data to the production database. The information in the STAGLOG table identifies the records in the production-ready data that must be inserted, updated, or deleted in the production database. Processed records are indicated in the STAGLOG table by a 1 in the STGPROCESSED column. These processed records are not deleted and can be used for future analysis or troubleshooting.
- fileprop utility
- Allows an administrator to propagate managed files from the production-ready data to the WebSphere Commerce EAR file on the production server.