In the past, developers have chosen to develop their own content-centric apps from scratch or by leveraging low level libraries. A content repository like Alfresco can save time and cost. Even if you don't choose Alfresco, you should still consider leveraging a standard API like CMIS as much as possible.

1. Relational Won't Cut ItArchitecting Content-Centric Applications for Java Jeff Potts Chief Community Officer

2. Agenda What is a content-centric application? Do-it-yourself approaches A better way: The Platform Approach Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) Standard Alfresco technical overview Repository services APIs

3. What is a Content-Centric Application? Web application with a mix of structured and unstructured data Unstructured data is typically file-based Office documents Images Audio/Video Reports Usually collaborative May also include business processes

4. A Few Examples Expense report review & approval Contract negotiation, creation, & review Press request/fulfillment Research study authoring Sales/Marketing collateral creation & communication Course guide ("student packet") authoring/publishing

5. Or the business is saying I’ve got a ton of files I’ve got people that produce them, sometimes collaboratively, and people that consume them. I want to somehow make it easier to deal with all of this. Source: eqqman

6. Pains Inability to find important content Black hole process Re-creating the wheel Productivity loss Higher costs Using outdated content Legal/business risk Loss-of-life/injury Source: khainomore

7. Components of content-centric systems User Interface Persistence/Data Model/Metadata Business Processes/Workflow Library Services (Upload/Download, Versioning, & Check-in/Check-out) Security Search Transforms/Renditions/Thumbs Tagging/Categorization Authoring tool integration Remote API Scheduler Comments/Ratings/Activity Streams

8. Let’s Build it Ourselves!

9. DIY approach seems simple “What’s so special about content-centric apps?” Standard web app toolkit Favorite front-end/presentation framework Relational Database Data Model/Metadata Comments/Ratings Tagging/Categorization Files? Generally, a Bad Idea

10. Files: Relational may not cut it Relational is good at text and numbers. Binary data, YMMV Size limits Random seek (streaming) Search: Some relational databases can index into blobs, but not all

11. File storage options On disk Amazon S3 or an internal CAS filer Source code control repository XML database NoSQL document store Content repository Apache Jackrabbit Alfresco Other open source and proprietary repositories

13. File system

14. Content binaries

15. Search indexes

16. Database

17. Relations (associations)

18. Metadata

19. Repository

21. “What have we done?” Source: gobucks2

22. Factors that affect DIY reasonableness Number and size of documents Number and concurrency of users Number and nature of integration points Business process volatility & complexity Time and cost of Integrating all of these services/sub-systems Maintaining all of that code…forever

23. The Platform Approach

24. Platform approach Much of this has already been solved Content Platform = Repository + Services Find a platform that meets your needs Extend the platform with your own business logic Write your own front-end using whatever language or framework makes sense Or, customize the UI that the platform provides

25. What makes a great content platform? Agility Applicable to a broad set of solutions Scale up, scale down Fast/Friendly Development Model Open Source Troubleshooting Bug tracking Community Standards compliance Lower switching costs Easier integration

26. Bigpicture Web Applications Knowledge Portals Web Services Business Process Engine App Server CRM Portal Server Virtual File System High Availability FTP CIFS WebDAV

27. and

28. What is CMIS? Content Management Interoperability Services Language-independent, vendor-neutral API for content management CRUD functions for nodes Check-in/check-out Associations Permissions (Access Control Lists) Policies Queries Repository traversal

29. The Beauty of Presentation Tier REST SOAP Content Services Tier ? ? Enterprise Apps Tier

31. REST / Atom

32. WebServices

33. Use cases

34. Repository to repository

35. Application to repository

36. Federatedrepositories

38. Implementations Already Available… Providers Consumers Developed by 30+ ECM Vendors

39. Open Source implementations of CMIS Apache Chemistry is the umbrella project for all CMIS related projects within the ASF OpenCMIS (Java, client and server) cmislib (Python, client) phpclient (PHP, client) DotCMIS (.NET, client)

41. Alfresco Overview Alfresco is an open source Enterprise Content Management platform Can manage any kind of file, any size Stores the file and metadata All content and metadata is searchable Files can be secured to specific users and groups CMIS-compliant

42. Alfresco Overview (Cont’d) Provides versioning and check-in/check-out Has a built-in workflow engine Can be accessed through a browser or from desktop applications via CIFS, WebDAV, FTP, IMAP, SMTP, SharePoint Three editions Community Team Enterprise

45. Repository Services

47. Creation, modification, deletion, …

48. Control over the objects

49. Permissions, locks

50. Content models

51. Properties, associations

52. Workflows

53. Search

54. Rules and Automatic Actions

56. Secured and transactional

57. Scheduled or on-demand

58. Can beleveraged by workflows

60. Program event-basedautomatictasks and actions

61. Run one or several actions

62. Reusablerules

63. Sortable rules

65. Workflows Full BPM capabilities with jBPM/Activiti Rich features : Parallel or serial workflows Joins, forks, conditions … Group or individual assignees Actions and complex behaviors Implement your custom lifecycle model through workflows Extensible--Build your own business processes

66. Security - Authentication Alfresco can handle it or pass it off to others ActiveDirectory LDAP Kerberos NTLM SSO Custom Source: rooreynolds

67. Security - Authorization Spring Security Framework (ACEGI) under the covers Users & Groups Access Control Lists Permissions Hierarchical

69. Checkin/Checkout

70. Locking

71. Versioning

72. Tags & categories

73. Authentication

74. LDAP sync

75. Groups & users

76. Data dictionary

77. Browsing

78. Lifecycle

79. Rating

80. Invitations

81. Sites

82. User quotas

83. Copy – move

85. Java & JavaScript Alfresco’s “foundation” API is Java Server-side JavaScript is also an option Remote APIs Web Services SOAP HTTP REST Webscripts - Java or JavaScript CMIS - Atom REST or SOAP Source: 96dpi

87. Summary Platform = Repository + Services CMIS is an important standard Alfresco is a great CMIS server Even if you don’t pick Alfresco, try to leverage CMIS Alfresco provides the repository plus services pre-integrated and ready for your custom content-centric apps

88. For More Information… Alfresco Community http://www.alfresco.org Alfresco Forums http://forums.alfresco.com Alfresco Wiki http://wiki.alfresco.com Alfresco Blogroll http://blogs.alfresco.com ECM Architect Blog http://ecmarchitect.com

89. Email: jpotts@alfresco.comTwitter: @jeffpotts01Blog: http://ecmarchitect.com

90. Extra/Unused Slides

91. Data Modeling Repository is a collection of nodes Everything is a node, nodes are typed Content Model is expressed in XML Cold-deploy most common, hot deploy possible Types, aspects, properties, associations, constraints Hierarchical Types inherit from super types

92. Types, Aspects, Properties, & Associations Content Types Type “report” (metadata : subject, abstract, …) Aspects Aspect “client” (metadata : name, reference, contact, …) Properties Property “customer id” [integer] Associations Association “related documents”

93. Example Aspects Useful for Cross-Cutting Type = Report Type = Contract Type = Email Type = Case Type attributes Subject Abstract Type attributes Effectivitystart date Effectivity and date Type attributes Subject Sender Recipients Type attributes Format Aspect = Client Aspect attributes Client nameClient IdContact-> Related docs

95. Services implemented through flexible components

96. XML driven configuration

97. Secured and transactional

99. Transformations and metadata extractions are used by Share web interface : PNG thumbnail Flashpreview Metadata extraction Transformations