System and method for least work publishing

1. A computerized system for content management that automatically determines when a static content page contains out of date content items as a result of changes made to the content items in a data source, the computerized system comprising:

a template engine for executing templates to generate a static content page, the template engine operative to generate a static content page comprising content items selectively retrieved from a data source and arranged on the static content page as defined by the template, each content item in the data source being associated with time stamp information to indicate the last time the content item was modified;

a dependency record for storing information regarding a relationship between content items that comprise the static content page and the content items stored in the data source and time parameter information associated with the content items that comprise the static content page;

dependency checking software for comparing information contained in the dependency record with information contained in the data source for each content item that comprises the static content page, determining through the comparison those static content pages that contain content items that have been modified in the data source, and instructing the template engine to re-generate a static content page that contains modified content items;

and

content management software to manage content items and operative to issue instructions to the dependency checking software to regenerate a static content page upon modification of a managed content item.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein a plurality of dependency records are used to store the relationship between the content items that comprises the static content page and the content items stored in the data source.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the static content page generated by the template engine comprises markup code.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the markup code is HTML.

5. The system of claim 3 wherein the markup code is XML.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the dependency record contains parameters comprising name/value pairs of the information that are passed to the template engine to generate the static content page.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein the dependency record comprises the address within the data source of the content items that comprise the static content page.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the dependency record comprises queries executed by the template engine to retrieve content items from the data source.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the dependency record comprises sub-template scripts used by the template engine to generate a static content page.

10. The system of claim 1 , wherein the dependency record comprises the time the static content page was generated.

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the dependency record comprises the date the static content page was generated.

12. The system of claim 1 , the content management software operative to issue instructions to the dependency checking software to re-generate a static content page upon modification of a template.

13. The system of claim 1 comprising one or more dependency records to store information regarding the relationship between a template and the content items that comprise the static content page.

14. The system of claim 1 , wherein the dependency checking software provides for comparison of time parameter information associated with a respective content item that comprises the static content page and time stamp information associated with a respective content item in the data source.

15. The system of claim 14 , wherein the time parameter information comprises a template execution time or a file publication time.

16. A method for content management that automatically determines when a static content page contains out of date content items as a result of changes made to the content items in a data source, the method comprising:

executing templates in a template engine to generate a static content page, the template engine operative to generate a static content page comprising content items selectively retrieved from a data source and arranged on the static content page as defined by the template, each content item in the data source being associated with time stamp information to indicate the last time the content item was modified, wherein the static content page is saved to a disk;

storing information in a dependency record, the information regarding a relationship between content items that comprise the static content page and the content items stored in the data source and time parameter information associated with the content items that comprise the static content page;

comparing information contained in the dependency record with information contained in the data source for each content item that comprises the static content page using dependency checking software;

determining through the comparison those static content pages that contain content items that have been modified in the data source;

instructing the template engine to re-generate a static content page that contains modified content items; and

managing content items using content management software operative to issue instructions to the dependency checking software to regenerate a static content page upon modification of a managed content item.

17. The method of claim 16 , wherein a plurality of dependency records are used to store the relationship between the content items that comprises the static content page and the content items stored in the data source.

18. The method of claim 16 , wherein the static content page generated by the template engine comprises markup code.

19. The method of claim 18 , wherein the markup code is HTML.

20. The method of claim 18 , wherein the markup code is XML.

21. The method of claim 16 , wherein the dependency record contains parameters comprising name/value pairs of the information that are passed to the template engine to generate the static content page.

22. The method of claim 16 , wherein the dependency record comprises the address within the data source of the content items that comprise the static content page.

23. The method of claim 16 , wherein the dependency record comprises queries executed by the template engine to retrieve content items from the data source.

24. The method of claim 16 , wherein the dependency record comprises sub-template scripts used by the template engine to generate a static content page.

25. The method of claim 16 , wherein the dependency record comprises the time the static content page was generated.

26. The method of claim 25 , wherein the dependency record comprises the date the static content page was generated.

27. The method of claim 16 , the content management software operative to issue instructions to the dependency checking software to re-generate a static content page upon modification of a template.

28. The method of claim 16 comprising one or more dependency records to store information regarding the relationship between a template and the content items that comprise the static content page.

29. The method of claim 16 , wherein the dependency checking software provides for comparison of time parameter information associated with a respective content item that comprises the static content page and time stamp information associated with a respective content item in the data source.

30. The method of claim 29 , wherein the time parameter information comprises a template execution time or a file publication time.