Preface

Introduction

This guide provides a general overview of the Network Appliance^TM ContentDirector^TM 2.0 API. For detailed information about the packages, classes, and methods contained in the API, see the Javadoc on the ContentDirector CD.

Audience

This guide is for programmers who use the ContentDirector API. It assumes you are familiar with your operating system, your network, the basic concepts of how data moves over a network, database concepts, and programming in the Java language. This guide does not cover basic system, programming, or network administration topics, such as IP addressing, routing, and network topology; it emphasizes the characteristics of the ContentDirector API software.

Terminology and conventions

The term "ContentDirector" refers to a complete configuration, including all components of the software.

This guide uses the term "type" to mean pressing one or more keys on the keyboard. It uses the term "enter" to mean pressing one or more keys, and then pressing the Enter key.

Keyboard conventions

When describing key combinations, this guide uses the hyphen (-) to separate individual keys. For example, "Ctrl-D" means pressing the "Control" and "D" keys simultaneously. Also, this guide uses the term "Enter" to refer to the key that generates a carriage return, although the key is named "Return" on some keyboards.

Typographic conventions

The following table describes typographic conventions used in this guide.

Convention	Type of information
Italic type	Words or characters that require special attention. File names. Placeholders, for information you must supply. Book titles in cross-references.
`Monospaced` font	Command names. Information displayed on the system console or other computer monitors. The contents of files.
Bold `Monospaced`font	Words or characters you type. What you type is always shown in lowercase letters, unless you must type it in uppercase letters.

Convention

Type of information

Italic type

Words or characters that require special attention.

File names.

Placeholders, for information you must supply.

Book titles in cross-references.

Monospaced font

Command names.

Information displayed on the system console or other computer monitors.

The contents of files.

Bold Monospacedfont

Words or characters you type. What you type is always shown in lowercase letters, unless you must type it in uppercase letters.

Special messages

This guide contains special messages that are described as follows:

Note
A note contains important information that helps you install or operate the system efficiently.

Caution
A caution contains instructions that you must follow to avoid loss of data.