1.
The ECM world from the
point of view of Alfresco

2.
You may remember me
● Open Source ECM Specialist at Sourcesence
● Author and Technical Reviewer at Packt Publishing
○ Alfresco 3 Web Services (2010)
○ GateIn Cookbook (2012)
● Alfresco Community (nickname OpenPj)
○ Alfresco Wiki Gardener
○ Global Moderator of the italian forum
○ Top 10 supporter (english and italian)
● PMC Member and Mentor at the Apache Software Foundation
○ Mentor for the Google Summer Of Code 2013
● JBoss Community
○ Content editor for jboss.org
○ Project Leader and Committer for PortletSwap (JBoss Portal)

3.
Overview
● What is Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?
○ Java Content Repository (JCR)
● What is Alfresco?
○ Architecture
○ Spaces and Rules
○ RESTful API
● Demo
● Resources

4.
Enterprise Content Management
Enterprise content management (ECM) is a formalized means of
organizing and storing an organization's documents, and other
content, that relate to the organization's processes. The term
encompasses strategies, methods, and tools used throughout the
lifecycle of the content.
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_content_management

5.
What is a repository?
● contents are kept is an organized way
○ ER model is the old way
○ Node graph is the new way
■ properties (metadata)
■ associations
■ renditions
● is from Latin repositorium
○ table of service
○ vessel
○ chamber
○ where to keep and find your things!!!

6.
Enterprise Content Management
ECM
Enterprise services
Public API
Repository
Storage
Users +
groups
(LDAP, IDM)
Workflow
Engine

7.
What is a repository? - You use it!!!
● Some simple examples:
○ SMTP servers
○ Google Drive
○ Dropbox
● Some Open Source repository implementations:
○ exoJCR
○ Apache JackRabbit
● Some Open Source ECM systems for critical usage:
○ Alfresco
○ Nuxeo
○ Hippo

8.
What is a repository? - Decoration
apply
metadata
CMIS
JCR
REST
SOAP
IMAP
EMAIL
FTP
Repository
retrieve content using
metadata
Query Languages:
CMIS
JCR SQL
XPath
Lucene
Full Text (Google style)
Indexes

9.
What is a repository? - Architecture
APIs (CMIS, REST, FTP, WebDAV, IMAP)
Model
Storage
Content Store
+
Indexes
Database

10.
What is a repository? - Model
● different point of view of how managing data
○ no more Relational databases (ER)
● based on the JCR Repository Model (JSR-283)
○ workspaces
○ identifiers
○ users
○ nodes and node types (contents)
■ properties and property types
■ associations (shared nodes)

11.
What is a repository? - Model
● A node is a generic content stored in a repository
○ type
○ properties
○ associations
○ binary streams (optional)
■ renditions
■ text document
■ Video
■ Image

12.
What is a repository? - Graph
Properties
(metadata):
Type
Node
- name
- description
- mimetype
- tags
- categories
Renditions
Binary 1
Binary 2
Binary 3

13.
What is a repository? - JCR Model
Repository
Workspace
1
Workspace
2
Workspace
3
Root node
A
D
B
E
C
G

14.
Why use a repository?
● you can scale out easily
● storing very large amounts of data
● storing simple data structures, such as simple JSON
● looking up data by keys rather than using queries
● searching for data based upon relevance
● evolving schemas and/or data structures
● caching data in-memory for performance

15.
Alfresco
● Open Source ^__^
● Community Edition
○ new features
○ wide community support
● Enterprise Edition
○ supported with SLA
○ complete release test
● Cloud-ready
● Collaboration
● CMIS

16.
Alfresco

17.
Alfresco Storage Architecture
JVM
Alfresco
Database
File System
Binari
File System
Indici

18.
Alfresco - Concepts
● Aspects
○ an aspect is a tag that can decorate contents
■ adding new properties
■ adding new behaviors (trigger)
● WebScripts
○ create your own REST API
● Collaboration & Security

19.
Alfresco - Concepts - Spaces
● Spaces
○ contains contents
○ rules for executing actions
■ event
■ actions

20.
Alfresco - Concepts - Spaces
● Spaces can be used for implementing a specific ECM
design pattern such as Drop Zones

21.
DEMO

22.
Resources
Homepage:
http://www.alfresco.com
Wiki:
http://wiki.alfresco.com
Documentation:
http://docs.alfresco.com

23.
Thank you for your
attention!
Questions?
http://www.open4dev.com