The SDL Tridion Reference Implementation

Recently, SDL released the Tridion Reference Implementation, or TRI, to the community. The first edition of the TRI is based on .NET and aims to provide a reference for customers and partners on a preferred approach to an implementation.

Traditionally, Tridion has had an open architecture where a delivery implementation (e.g. an MVC framework) was not supplied with the product. This allowed customers to choose the delivery architecture which suited their needs. As a result we see variations from a simple ASP.NET/ JSP page based site to a fully dynamic MVC based implementation. With the release of the TRI, nothing changes in that regard but should you wish, there is an implementation that you can start from.

The TRI is an MVC based application that uses common elements and approaches with the community MVC application, DD4T. This means that customers using DD4T are compatible with the TRI from a Content Management point of view and so long as the TRI is getting content from something in the right format it can be independent of the content provider though support for semantic web (but by default, Tridion is the content provider). The templates are managed in the application and not in content management and the supplied templates follow a RESS approach and are re-brandable using bootstrap / LESS. The approach means that you can rapidly rebrand the application to another design and this can support a wide variety of devices using one site rather than separate websites for different devices.

The current release, version 1, will be replaced with the upcoming version 2 which will add new features – implementing more SDL product features – will have a java version and will become part of the SDL product stack and available with the installation of Tridion. Right now, you can contribute to the release by going ahead and using it.

You can download it from SDL Tridion World and look at the sources on github.