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e-Spirit was started up by former employees of the Fraunhofer Institut für Software- und Systemtechnik (FhG ISST). Unlike most other CMS the FirstSpirit™ product was not developed out of a customer project but is based on detailed market and competitor analysis. This was the foundation of a flexible and powerful architecture which basic principles apply until today.
FirstSpirit™ is solely developed by the company's own developer team in the e-Spirit head office in Dortmund.
FirstSpirit™ is a classic client-server application, which is completely based on Java and web technology.
The FirstSpirit™ server is accessed either via FirstSpirit™ JavaClient or via FirstSpirit™ WebClient. While JavaClient provides a convenient, swing-based interface for both editors and template developers, WebClient is optimised on the basis of a browser-based interface for fast and uncomplicated maintenance of editorial content.
Communication between the FirstSpirit™ client and server, depending on the use scenario, is either based on HTTP(S) using an application
server or on direct use of TCP.
The live system undertakes the actual delivery of content to the end user. The FirstSpirit™ server is strictly separated from the live system. It only needs to establish a connection when redeploying to transfer data. (see Figure). A direct interaction between the live system and the FirstSpirit™ server is not necessary.
FirstSpirit™ is a pure Java application, which uses XML formats to store data.
One objective in the implementation of FirstSpirit™ was platform independence, which was specifically implemented in the following points:
FirstSpirit™ provides all users, depending on their tasks, with a client precisely adapted to their respective needs.
FirstSpirit™ therefore also provides several clients for different tasks and users. It is possible to differentiate between editing environments and administration environments. While FirstSpirit™ editing environments support the work of the editors and template developers, the administration environments are primarily tailored to monitoring and configuration of the FirstSpirit™ system.
Creation and delivery of the content in FirstSpirit™ is characterised by the principle of "pre-generation" – wherever possible the content is not compiled on the live system, but instead is assembled on the FirstSpirit™ server first (i.e. in less time-critical offline mode). Only the parts of a site or a single page which absolutely have to be generated dynamically are generated in the live system during the runtime.
Examples of absolutely necessary dynamic parts are personalised areas, search queries or displays of real time data – all other parts of a website such as complex (unpersonalised) navigations or PDF documents can be pre-rendered.
Therefore, when using FirstSpirit™, only that which is absolutely necessary is rendered "online" – an inestimable advantage for the live system with respect to aspects such as resource requirements, scalability and the response time performance of the system even under high load conditions.
