Package com.epicentric.segment

Supports classification of users based on user properties.

See:
Package Summary

Interface Summary

Segment

Encapsulation of a set of conditions that form the basis for segment membership.

Class Summary

SegmentManager

Singleton manager of segments (only one exists in the system).

Exception Summary

CannotFindResourceException

Exception indicating that a particular resource needed for the operation was not found in the system.

Package com.epicentric.segment Description

Supports classification of users based on user properties. Although this package is part of a general-purpose segmentation API, currently it is used only for segmenting users to support personalization of portal content. User segmentation is optimized for querying a segment to determine whether a particular user belongs to that segment.

A segment is one or more conditions that objects must satisfy in order to qualify as members of that segment. A condition is an instance of an expression; an expression consists of a property, an operator, and a value. All of the expressions that are valid for a particular data type are referred to as the "grammar" for that data type.

Here are a few examples of conditions:

• The user's Server Admin property has a value of "false"
• The beginning of the user's Zip code is within the range of 940 through 950
• The user's "created date" property is at least 30 days in the past
• The user's email address does not contain ".gov"

Multiple conditions can be combined into criteria using either the AND operator (all conditions must be met to qualify for membership in the segment) or the OR operator (any one condition qualifies for segment membership).

Vignette Portal provides an administrative UI for creating, modifying, deleting, and listing segments. The segment package includes methods for querying segments. In addition, a custom JSP tag can be used to test whether the current user belongs to a particular segment. In the following example, the user would see a welcome message only if that user is in the segment whose friendly ID is "Europe":

   <%@ taglib uri="vgn-tags" prefix="vgn-portal" %>

   <vgn-portal:inSegment friendlyID="Europe">
       <p>
       Welcome, <%=currentUser.getDisplayName()%>
       </p>
   </vgn-portal:inSegment>

See Also:

com.epicentric.user