EXTENSIBLE CONTROLS FOR A CONTENT DATA REPOSITORY

An extensible control interface is provided to simplify access to the content management repository. Developers can write extension interfaces associated with new data types, where the extension interfaces extend the extensible control and are annotated with the control extension annotation. These new interfaces can specify the repository name and declare various methods annotated with annotations. Parameters of the various methods can also be annotated to supply needed information. Using an annotation process tool (APT), the developer can generate the bean and implementation classes and the methods can subsequently be called upon to perform operations on types in the repository. For example, the extensible control can take care of interacting with the type manager to perform the needed actions within the repository in order to create the new object classes and nodes. Object classes can be created on the first call, while node instances upon each call of the create method.