Terra Cotta Features

• Session management - the ability to store state variables through a user's session and to identify users.
• User authentication - users can log in and out of the system
• Permissioning - Arbitrarily fine-grained permissions system allows permissions policy for users and groups of users
• Incremental utility of data model - The database data models are integrated, but normalized to support easy partial usage of the system.
• Canonical admin tools - tools provided to do file administration, user management, permissions policy specification, etc.
• Auto-installation - the system can clone itself over the network to allow for very easy "hands-free" installation which operates through the web and prompts for all necessary parameters.
• Packaging concept for easy expandability - uses a standard definition for specifying add-on packages for any sort of web functionality. This allows integration of packages for site-wide functionality and a standard interface to set customization parameters.
• "One Click" Installation of expansion packages - packages inherit the environment inhabited by the core, and so site managers do not need to edit any code to install packages.
• Views concept for templating - Views provide a way to separate content and logic with arbitrarily complex (PHP-based) templates, and also are securely isolated to allow site users to define their own custom look and feel for the website.
• Variety of standard utility libraries - Search query parsing, text to HTML, XML parsing, date functions, etc. included in modules which accompany the basic installation.
• Portability - the core is designed to be easily portable between databases, languages, and site layouts.