Alfresco

Review: Alfresco Developer Guide [Part I]

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Alfresco Developer Guide Alfresco Developer Guide: Customizing Alfresco with actions, web scripts, web forms, workflows, and more

Jeff Potts

Okay, I know what your thinking, an Alfresco book review? Where did he find the time and what about Documentum? It is simple, I haven’t found the time. Not yet at least.  This is going to be a multi-post review. More on that in a few paragraphs.

As for Documentum, it isn’t going anywhere. Regardless of what I might say, especially when I critique EMC World, I like the product more than ever. However, as Tony Byrne of CMS Watch likes to say, Every ECM product is perfect for at least one organization [paraphrasing]. For some, the answer isn’t a traditional ECM vendor or SharePoint. For some, the answer is Open Source. It may be the right answer based on the organizations infrastructure or it is just a strategy decided upon by the CIO.

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The Source Code from the AIIM iECM CMIS Demo

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I’ve been promising this for a while, but it is finally available.  I had all these plans, but I decided to just get the code out for everyone as I seem to keep getting busy.  You can tell that the code was written to work and not to be supported.  All you critics can relax, I know already.

Before I go any further, I want to thank Craig Randall for his sample application that helped me get started. That application is also available on the EDN as well. Read his write-up, Consuming CMIS WSDL in Visual Studio and then go to the EDN for his code.

I also want to thank Thomas Pole for helping to write the User Interface, design the object model,  and leading AIIM’s efforts around iECM and CMIS in general.  Some of the code you will see is his.

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Upcoming CMIS Webinar

Just wanted to take a quick break to let everyone know that I will be speaking on Alfresco’s webinar on CMIS this Thursday, April 9th, at Noon EDT. Unleashing CMIS: From Federated Search to Developer Tools gives an introduction to CMIS, including some history, and then dives into the creation of the AIIM iECM Committee’s CMIS Demo.  I’ll be talking about the entire process and then showing a brief demo of the actual application.  At the end there will be a Question and Answer session.

So if you missed the talk at AIIM, or are just late coming to the CMIS party, come along and see the first multi-vendor CMIS implementation.

Register here.

My Day at AIIM Expo 2009 with CMIS

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Okay, let’s be clear.  I didn’t travel around with CMIS all day. On the other hand, CMIS got me to the AIIM Expo this year, opened a few doors, and started many a conversation. It is amazing what standing on a soapbox for a year and a half can accomplish. It was an interesting day that was well spent and I wish I had two days at the conference.  I was always rushing trying to get to see everyone and talk to everyone, and I failed. I did accomplish my primary objective, and that was a success.

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Update on the AIIM CMIS Demo

At the end of January, I talked about the proposed effort being undertaken by the iECM committee to create a CMIS demonstration for the AIIM Expo. Things are going well and I am working with others to build the demonstration. I wanted to share a few details with you.

  • We are implementing the Web Service binding for CMIS. While REST would be better for what we are doing, it was felt that the Web Services binding would be easier for the development team to churn out.
  • As a result of that, the participating vendors are Alfresco, EMC, IBM, and Nuxeo. Microsoft wanted to participate was not sure that their Web Services binding would be complete in time.
  • Each vendor will have a two issues worth of articles from AIIM’s bi-monthly publication, Infonomics.  In addition, each vendor is welcome to add their own white papers and collateral to the system.
  • Users will search on metadata and/or full text. All searches will be round-robin sorted so that each repository has multiple hits on the first page, assuming that they have any content that meets the criteria.
  • The system is being developed in .NET because we were able to identify a free hosting server that could support the effort.
  • We, including myself, are going to be at the Expo on April 2nd to talk about it. I’ll share the exact time when I have it.

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CMIS and SharePoint

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This is a critical subject.  As I said when the CMIS standard was released, the key to its success will be vendor adoption.  This means more than just signing off on the standard.  The vendors have to incorporate it into their message and start to show clients, partners, and analysts how they plan to support and implement CMIS.  Based on how the ECM marketplace has begun to revolve around SharePoint, I consider Microsoft’s support a major component for success.  CMIS can succeed without them at first, but it will be a much steeper hill to climb without Microsoft.

Well, Microsoft appears to be doing things right so far.  In addition to showing a desire to participate in the AIIM effort (along with EMC, Alfresco, IBM, and Nuxeo), they hosted the first OASIS CMIS Technical Committee meeting out in Redmond, WA.  More important than either of those actions is the implications of this MSDN article, Integrating External Document Repositories with SharePoint Server 2007.

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The Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 2008

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[Updated 11/10/2008 in order to make Gartner, Inc. happier, or at least less angry.]

One thing about writing entries on public transportation, no Internet.  This make is tough to refer to web sites that haven’t been opened and cached.  As a result, today (I’m optimistic, so I’m not saying “this week”) brings you Gartner, Inc.’s 2008 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management review.  Released on September 23, 2008, the biggest surprise was the number of vendors that didn’t hype it.

An important note from Gartner, Inc., Gartner advises readers not to compare the placement of vendors from last year to this year.  With that in mind, since I’m human, here is a link to my post about last year’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management titled, The ECM Magic Quadrant, for reference.

Enter Open Source

Before we get to the chart, there are two big developments to take note of this year.  The biggest is the inclusion of Alfresco.  That’s right, an open source vendor has arrived.  They are listed categorized as a niche player so far in this report.  Considering limited, but growing, adoption and their evolving product, that is understandable.  I think that their vision got dinged because they have been taking a stronger collaboration (read Enterprise 2.0) tack as of late, but that is just conjecture.

I think they may be selling Alfresco short, but marketplace adoption and confidence is a factor in this study.  It will be interesting to see how the perception, and reality, evolves over the next year.

Other open source vendors will be slow in appearing here as Records Management is considered a core requirement to be in the chart report.  I agree with this, but I may set the bar lower for compliance than Gartner, Inc. does as I think basic retention policies are all that is required.

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Vendor Support for CMIS

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As I discussed yesterday, I’ve been waiting a long time for the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard.  There is still a fair amount of excitement out there as more people join the conversation.  I’m still excited, but the excitement is beginning to be tempered by reality.

There are two primary factors to standard adoption:

  • Is the standard technically sound?  It has to actually solve the stated problem.  It is okay if a standard is limited in functionality in initial drafts as long as it evolves to accomplish everything required.  At the same time, it must be easy enough to use.  These are not small technical challenges.
  • Is there vendor support?  Let’s face it, if the vendors don’t support it, then it will fail.  The JSR-170 and JSR-283 standards are perfect examples.  They aren’t supported by a critical mass of vendors.  The reasons range from the technical (we work in Java), to the philosophical (it is a bad standard, let’s focus elsewhere), and to the lazy (nobody cares so let’s ignore it).

Customers are important, but it takes a large mass of them to force the vendors to act.  I would qualify them as a secondary factor.  While I digest the technical aspects, take a look at the Vendor Support factor.

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Enter CMIS, a Proposed ECM-SOA Standard

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I am almost too excited for words.  Every thought I have is leading down ten different paths.  You may ask why.  Simple, they finally announced an ECM-SOA standard.  This new standard, Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS), has been submitted to OASIS for approval.  This is the same standard that I initially learned about at EMC World.

Emails streamed to me all day alerting me to this announcement, and I was blissfully offline.  Now I wish some people (you know who you are) had told me to pay attention this morning.  As it is, I’ve decided to let everyone of you know about it and give some thoughts to the effort.  I still have to review the actual specification and find out what this means to each of the key vendors.

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Open Source vs. Open Source

I went to the monthly meeting of the Web Content Mavens last night. They were featuring a panel speaking on about 7 different Open Source Web Content Management systems. Some of the vendors present, like Alfresco, do more than web content, but web content was the focus. It was moderately interesting. I would have loved to see more interaction among the panelists, but it was good to hear their spin on what they each do best and to talk with them afterwards.

Before I say anything else, the highlight for me was when one of the panelist, a primary contributor to DotNetNuke, Antonio Chagoury, said,

You get what you pay for.

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