ZENPRESS Smart Query Objects
For ZENPRESS, we also developed something called Smart Query Objects. Our Smart Query Object technology aggregates the content of individual elements of a publication into another aspect of the publication. This is done through the use of Smart Query Objects.
Smart Query Objects are very similar to Smart Style Objects. They're small code modules that are relatively easy to create. They go into a publication’s internal database and extract data from the publication itself, reassemble that data into a new format and return it for use somewhere else in that publication or another one. An important aspect of a Smart Query Object is that it doesn't just extract publication elements, it also reassembles those elements with some degree of post-processing. This allows us to perform some action on each element. One thing we can do, for example, is to attach XML formatting information to each element during the extraction process, so we can automatically sift through a publication's structure and construct a data structure that can be shared dynamically, Internet-wide.
Let me give you an example of how that works. On the ZATZ site (which you're looking at now), we have a list of authors. This author list is built dynamically using a Smart Query Object. The Smart Query Object goes into the current issue of each publication, extracts all of the author names, and feeds them back to the site to present that list. In fact, when you click the ZATZ Authors, you're actually making a dynamic database query using the Smart Query Objects.
It does the same with the news headlines on the site. Smart Query Objects scan the news items for each publication and assemble the headlines so they can be displayed on the site.
These tools are reusable technology that can be called upon by any aspect of the system. In effect, they're little mini-aggregators that go off, pull out very specific information, and place them somewhere else, using intelligence built into each object.
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