Alfresco overview EDM
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- Alfresco is an open source enterprise content management system built using components like Spring, Lucene, Hibernate, and others. - It includes applications like Alfresco Share and Explorer for managing content. Content includes documents, images, records, and digital assets. - Alfresco's architecture includes a content application server providing services like content management, workflow, and collaboration built on a content repository that stores and queries content. - It uses APIs like remote web services/REST APIs for clients and embedded APIs for extensions, and allows customizing the content model and extending functionality through modules.
Alfresco overview EDM
- 1. NGUYỄN VĂN SANG SKYPE SANG89VH MAIL [email protected] FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/sang.nguyen.792197 ĐT 01656054323 WEB 123HOIDAP.VN Hà Nội, 20/01/2015
- 2. Alfresco Overview INTRODUCTION ARCHITECTURAL OVERVIEW THE ALFRESCO CONTENT APPLICATION SERVER THE CONTENT REPOSITORY MODULARITY THROUGH A SPRING FRAMEWORK CONTENT SERVICES APIS EXTENDING ALFRESCO CONTENT MODELING WEB APPLICATION FRAMEWORK
- 3. Introduction • Alfresco is ECM (Enterprise content management) • Alfresco built a different kind of system using open source development and incorporating open source components, such as Spring, Lucene, Hibernate,jBPM, FreeMarker, and POI.
- 4. Introduction
- 5. Introduction • Alfresco Applications two main applications are Alfresco Share and Alfresco Explorer. – The Alfresco Web Tier and Surf – Alfresco Programming Models
- 6. Introduction • CONTENT APPLICATIONS These applications are content-rich and their business processes tend to focus on the creation, management, delivery, access, and use of content. Aside from the major applications of document, image, records, digital asset, and Web content management, there are a number of specific applications and use cases that add value to the enterprise and reduce both cost and waste
- 7. Introduction • Knowledge Management Web content management is about managing Web sites, managing the content that goes into Web sites (such as HTML and images), and managing the processes of building, testing, and deploying Web sites and content.
- 8. Introduction • Information Publishing Information publishing is a specialized form of Web content management.
- 9. Introduction • Records Management Records management is used to control important information that needs to be retained for extended periods of time.
- 10. Introduction • Collaborative Content Development Many knowledge-oriented business processes rely on content as the container of information captured and developed as part of the creative process.
- 11. Introduction • Case Management Case Management is the handling of information related to a case, such as an insurance claim, an investigation, or personnel processing.
- 12. Introduction
- 14. Architectural Overview • The Alfresco Content Application Server provides the following categories of services • built upon the content repository: • ➤ Content services (for example, transformation, tagging, metadata extraction) • ➤ Control services (for example, workflow, records management, change sets) • ➤ Collaboration services (for example, social graph, activities, wiki)
- 15. THE ALFRESCO CONTENT APPLICATION SERVER
- 16. The Content Repository • ➤ Definition of content structure (modeling) • ➤ Creation, modification, and deletion of content, associated metadata, and relationships • ➤ Query of content • ➤ Access control on content (permissions) • ➤ Versioning of content • ➤ Content renditions • ➤ Locking • ➤ Events • ➤ Audits • ➤ Import/Export • ➤ Multilingual • ➤ Rules/Actions
- 18. The Content Repository • The storage engine also exposes query capabilities provided by a custom query engine built on Apache Lucene that supports the following search constructs: • ➤ Metadata filtering • ➤ Path matching • ➤ Full text search • ➤ Any combination of the above
- 19. The Content Repository Query EngineThe query engine and storage engines are hooked into the transaction and permission support of the infrastructure, thus offering consistent views and permission access. Several query languages are exposed , including native Lucene, XPath, Alfresco FTS (Full Text Search), and CMIS Query Language (with embedded Alfresco FTS).
- 20. Modularity through a Spring Framework • Alfresco employed the Spring framework for its factory, Dependency Injection, and Aspect- Oriented Programming capabilities.
- 21. Content Services • ➤ Content— Advanced content management capabilities • ➤ Control— Encapsulation of processes • ➤ Collaboration— Integration of content into social networks
- 22. Content Services • Lifecycle— Management of content state over time • ➤ Transformation— Conversion of content from one type to another • ➤ Metadata Extraction— Synchronization of document metadata with node metadata • ➤ Tagging— Arbitrary user-generated tags versus formally defined classifications • Control services encapsulate processes through which content flows and comprise the following: • ➤ Workflow— Structured process that include a sequence of connected steps, often involving human interactions through allocation of tasks • ➤ Records— File plans, record types, retention and archival policies, disposition, and reporting, all certified to the DOD 5015.2 standard
- 23. Content Services • ➤ Change Set— Working area for making safe content modifications • ➤ Preview— Viewing of content as it should be before publishing • ➤ Deployment: Publishing of content from one environment to another • Collaboration services integrate the production and publishing of content into social networks: • ➤ Social Graph— Represents people and their relationship to each other, either directly or indirectly through groups or teams • ➤ Activities— Continuous personalized feed of activities performed by others in the social graph or by Alfresco • ➤ Wiki— Easy creation and editing of interlinked Web pages • ➤ Blog— Log of regularly maintained entries of commentary, events, and other material, such as documents and videos • ➤ Discussions— Threaded conversations
- 24. APIs The Alfresco Content Application Server exposes two flavors of API, each of which has been designed for a specific type of client: ➤ Remote API— Used by clients to remotely communicate with the Alfresco Content Application Server — specifically, to treat it as a black box ➤ Embedded API— Used by extensions that are registered and executed within the Alfresco Content Application Server
- 25. The Remote API • The Remote API is the API primarily used when building ECM solutions against the Alfresco Content Application Server. Actually, two styles of Remote API are exposed : • ➤ Web services— SOAP- based service-oriented interfaces • ➤ RESTful— HTTP-based resource-oriented interfaces
- 26. The Embedded API • The Embedded API is the API used when developing extensions to the Alfresco Content Application Server. Extensions, which are deployed into the server, are often dependent on existing services provided by the server. Therefore, developers of extensions use the Embedded API to gain access to those services.
- 27. The Embedded API • The Embedded API comes in several forms, where each form is structured for a particular need or kind of extension • Alfresco Java Foundation API— The set of public Java interfaces exposed by services built into the Alfresco Content Application Server • ➤ JCR— Standard (JSR-170) set of Java interfaces for interacting with the content repository • ➤ JavaScript API— An object-oriented view of the Java Foundation API specifically tailored for use in JavaScript • ➤ FreeMarker API— An object-oriented view of the Java Foundation API specifically tailored for use in FreeMarker templates • ➤ Content Definition— An API for creating and editing content models • ➤ Workflow Definition— An API for defining business processes
- 28. The Embedded API
- 29. The Embedded API • ➤ Alfresco Java Foundation API— The set of public Java interfaces exposed by services built into the Alfresco Content Application Server • ➤ JCR— Standard (JSR-170) set of Java interfaces for interacting with the content repository • ➤ JavaScript API— An object- oriented view of the Java Foundation API specifically tailored for use in JavaScript • ➤ FreeMarker API— An object- oriented view of the Java Foundation API specifically tailored for use in FreeMarker templates • ➤ Content Definition— An API for creating and editing content models • ➤ Workflow Definition— An API for defining business processes • ➤ Web Script— Definition and implementation of a RESTful API • ➤ Action— Encapsulates a process primarily used with rules • ➤ Transformer— Converts content from one format to another • ➤ Policy— Event handler registered against an event • ➤ Service— Encapsulates a set of related features • ➤ Content Model— Definition of types, aspects, and their relationships • ➤ Workflow— A business process
- 30. CONTENT MODELING
- 31. DEPLOYING A CONTENT MODEL • A content model is defined in its entirety as a single XML document, which must comply with the content metamodel XSD schema provided by the Alfresco content repository. Each model contains a set of related and coherent definitions, and is deployed as a unit. • Two approaches to deploying a content model into the content repository:Bootstrap and dynamic.
- 32. Bootstrap • A Dictionary Bootstrap component is defined using the following snippet of Spring framework XML
- 34. WEB APPLICATION FRAMEWORK • Alfresco are built on Spring Surf
- 35. WEB APPLICATION FRAMEWORK • ➤ Site Dispatcher— Allows you to easily create pages and link them to the overall navigation of the Web site. It also allows you to build pages in a way that promotes reusability so that components do not need to be built more than once. • ➤ Templates— Allows you to define a page layout once and then reuse it across a large set of pages. You can develop pages using FreeMarker, JSP, HTML, or Java. • ➤ UI Library— Reusable UI components that can be bound into regions (or slots) within your • page or template. They consist of back-end application logic and front-end presentation code. • ➤ Pages— Allows for pages to be rendered in multiple formats, such as print format, PDF, or mobile device. • ➤ AJAX support— Integration with YUI Library. • ➤ Forms— Rich Forms engine for rendering and collecting data.
- 37. Extending Alfresco • Extending Alfresco with RESTful Services • Extending Share
- 38. Extending Alfresco with RESTful Services
- 39. THE WEB SCRIPT FRAMEWORK
- 40. THE WEB SCRIPT FRAMEWORK • ➤ A description document— This describes the URI and HTTP method that will initiate the Web script. For example, the Web script is given a short name and description, along with authentication and transactional needs. URI bindings are described as URI templates. • ➤ An optional controller script— Written in JavaScript, this will do the actual work. For example, the script may query the Alfresco content repository to build a set of data items, known as amodel, to render in the response; or for URIs that intend to modify the repository (hopefully, PUT, POST, and DELETE method bindings), the script may update the Alfresco repository. The JavaScript has access to the URI query string, Alfresco Content Application Services, and content repository data entry points. • ➤ One or more FreeMarker response templates— Known asviews, these will render output in the correct format for your specific needs (for example, HTML, Atom, XML, RSS, JSON, CSV, or any combination of these). The HTTP response is rendered via one of the supplied emplates, where the chosen template is based on the required response content type or status outcome. The template has access to the URI query string, common repository data entry points, and any data items built by the optional controller script
- 41. Extending Share
- 42. Extending Share
- 43. Extending Alfresco Content Model • Configure a custom content model • Define and add custom aspect (set of properties) • Define and use your custom content models • Define associated documents for your custom content types • Define constraints for your custom properties • Preview content using custom presentation templates • Enable dynamic customization of models without requiring a restart of the Alfresco server
- 44. Extending Alfresco Content Model
- 45. Extending Alfresco Content Model • https://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Data_Dictionar y_Guide
- 46. Implementing Workflow • Enable simple workflow on documents • Create e-mail templates and set e-mail notifications • Extend workflow with multiple approval steps • Implement advanced workflow using Activiti • Create custom Activiti workflows • Dynamically deploy workflow via the Activiti Console • Create and deploy the workflow task dialog. • Create and deploy the workflow resource bundle • Start Advance Workflow • Assign documents and properties to the workflow • Assign workflow task to the users
- 47. Integrating External Applications with Alfresco • Alfresco Integration Protocols • Alfresco Web Script framework which provides RESTful web services for integration • Various application integration examples including Liferay Portal, Drupal CMS, iPhone, and Facebook • Alfresco Support for CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Service)
- 48. Integrating External Applications with Alfresco
- 49. Customizing the User Interface • Configure space portal views • Add custom icons to spaces • Extend the action menu items • Write custom dashlets • Use webscript as dashlets • Write custom templates to preview content • Write custom templates • Write custom JSPs • Integration with external system
- 51. Business Process Management ➤ Introducing workflow in Alfresco ➤ Defining a workflow ➤ Creating a process definition ➤ Creating tasks based on the task model ➤ Customizing the workflow behavior ➤ Configuring the Explorer user interface
- 53. DEFINING A WORKFLOW IN ALFRESCO A workflow definition comprises aprocess definition,atask model,andsomeuser interface configuration. All three of these components are necessary to build a workflow. ➤ Process definition:Specifies the workflow process, defining what human tasks and automated processes to execute, and flow control. ➤ Task model:Provides a description of each task in a workflow by defining the various attributes associated with that task. ➤ UI configuration: Allows for customization of the UI component that is used for presenting workflow-related information to the userand taking inputs from the user.
- 54. DEFINING A WORKFLOW IN ALFRESCO
- 55. DEFINING A WORKFLOW IN ALFRESCO • A Section is best thought of as a folder with additional metadata and behaviour. Each section is uniquely named within its parent section. Each website has one root section which is the only section whose parent is not another section • An asset is any piece of content that is placed in a section. An asset doesn't have very much "special" metadata, but does contain summary information about visitor feedback that has been received for that asset such as the number of comments received and the average rating.
- 56. DEFINING A WORKFLOW IN ALFRESCO • Asset Collection: As the name suggests, an asset collection groups together a number of assets. Each asset collection is associated with a particular section and is uniquely named within that section. There are two general types of asset collection: "dynamic" and "static". A dynamic asset collection is configured with a search query that is run periodically. The assets found by the query are placed in the collection. A static asset collection has no search query defined, and contains assets that are placed in it either manually or through some other automated mechanism.
- 57. DEFINING A WORKFLOW IN ALFRESCO • Visitor Feedback is information that has been passed back through a rendered website into the repository. It may be used for numerous purposes, but in the Quick Start example it is used to record comments about an asset and requests from the "Contact us" page. A piece of visitor feedback has a number of generally useful properties such as the name and email address of the person who submitted it, a text property for the message or comment, and an integer property that can be used for ratings. It is also possible to have different categories of visitor feedback.
Editor's Notes
- #4: Alfresco built a different kind of system using open source development and incorporating open source components, such as Spring, Lucene, Hibernate,jBPM, FreeMarker, and POI. The Alfresco system incorporated the major applications of ECM — document, image, Web content, record, and digital asset management — but in an easier, more deployable package. By adopting appropriate open standards, Alfresco generally fits in any enterprise environment. Alfresco’s Content Application Server provides a platform for developing content applications in a number of different development styles suitable for the programming task at hand. By being scalable, Alfresco can adapt from small departmental solutions to large-scale Internet solutions.
- #5: The Alfresco system in many ways looks similar to other ECM systems. At the core is a repository supported by a server that persists content, metadata, associations, and full text indexes. There is a set of programming interfaces that support multiple languages and protocols upon which developers can create custom applications and solutions. Out of the box applications provide standard solutions such as document management, records management, and Web content management The Content Application Server and the Repository At the heart of the Alfresco system is the Content Application Server, which manages and maintains the Content Repository. The repository is comparable to a database except that it holds more than data. The binary streams of content are stored in the repository and the associated full-text indexes are maintained by the Lucene indexes. The actual binary streams of the content are stored in files managed in the repository, although these files are for internal use only and do not reflect what you might see through the shared drive interfaces. The repository also holds the associations among content items, classifications, and the folder/file structure. The folder/file structure is maintained in the database and is not reflected in the internal file storage structure.
- #6: Alfresco Explorer is the original application builtwith the Alfresco system to manage content. Alfresco Explorer allows you to browse the repository, set up rules and actions, and manage content and its metadata, associations, and classifications. Alfresco Explorer was built using JavaServer Faces and is integrated into the Content Application Server. It is currently being phased out in favor of Alfresco Share. However, many extensions and language packs have been built for Alfresco Explorer. It also has extensive capabilities for managing the repository and should be considered a system administrator tool. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfresco Share is the next-generation user interfacebuilt entirely with the Alfresco Web script technology and can be used to extend the application. Alfresco Share provides content management capabilities with simple user interfaces, providing users with tools to search and browse the repository; content as thumbnails and associated metadata; previews using Flash renditions of content; and a set of collaboration tools such as Wikis, Discussions, and Blogs.Alfresco Share is also the foundation for Alfresco records management. Alfresco Share is organized as a set of sites that can be used as a meeting place for collaboration. ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Alfresco Web Tier and Surf Alfresco provides ECM capabilities as data services, user interfaces, and user applications. The user interface capabilities are provided by applications and application components using Alfresco’s Web tier, Surf, originally developed as a faster way to develop content applications using scripting and REST architecture. Surf uses Web scripts heavilyto build user interface components and to access information from the Content Application Server.In 2009, Alfresco contributed Surf as a project to the Spring community where it can be used in conjunction with other Spring Web-tier components, such as Spring MVC, Spring Webflow, and Grails. -------------------------------------------------------------- Alfresco Programming Models In order to build an application using the Alfresco Content Application Server, you have the choice of a number of programming models. The simplestmodel for non-programmers is to use out-of-the-box components of the Alfresco Share application andto use the Rules and Actions model, a set of conditions and actions to take on content, based on those conditions. Rules and actions can be defined using a wizard and can perform such actions as convert content, move content, or execute a simple JavaScript snippet. The sample Knowledge Base application uses rules and actions to do basic processing of content entered into the Knowledge Base.
- #7: Alfresco can be used to build most ECM applications. These are the applications in which enterprises use content to engage customers, partners, and employees. These applications are content-rich and their business processes tend to focus on the creation, management, delivery, access, and use of content. Aside from the major applications of document, image, records, digital asset, and Web content management, there are a number of specific applications and use cases that add value to the enterprise and reduce both cost and waste. The following applications are typical of ECM and are ones that Alfresco is particularly adept at supporting. The Alfresco applications can often be used as the foundation for these application use cases. By applying the programming models previously discussed,you can extend these applications or build your own applications using Alfresco.
- #8: Knowledge management is the capture of knowledge (from employees in an organization or customers who use their products) and the provision of that knowledge in a form that others can use. Content tends to be the best and most reusable container of knowledge in sharing that knowledge with others. This book uses a knowledge management sample application as the basis for demonstrating how to extend Alfresco and build your own applications
- #9: Information publishing is a specialized form of Web content management. It involves the real-time publishing of content from different sources to the Web site and the deployment of that content to the Web farm for Internet access. This can take the form of digital assets such as articles, written internally or syndicated from other sources, or photos. Alfresco is used by many media companies to combine this content and publish it to their Web sites. This straight-through publishing of information requires both strong content control and performance to aggregate and push out the content. Alfresco is well suited to this type of Web content management.
- #10: Records management is used to control important information that needs to be retained for extended periods of time. You would use records management over document management in regulated or compliant environments, such as in managing governmental information or personnel records, or where information may be audited. Alfresco has been certified to the U.S. Government 5015.2 records standard and is useful for controlling retention and review periods, providing specialized security, and determining whether the records are archived or destroyed after a specified period of time. However, no two records repositories are the same and although Alfresco records management provides a good foundation, you may want to provide additional functionality through configuration or customization. At the very least, you will need to configure the file plan specific to the department deploying records management
- #11: Many knowledge-oriented business processes rely on content as the container of information captured and developed as part of the creative process. Collaborative work such as new product development, sales proposal preparation, or strategic planningmore often than not have a document of some sort (a Word document, a PowerPoint presentation, or an Excel spreadsheet) that represents the fruit of the effort. Sometimes the content is the purpose of the collaboration, such as the creation of a report or a book like the one you are reading right now. Alfresco was used to manage the development of this book, and it is a good example of collaborative content management. Alfresco and Alfresco Share are useful tools in collaborative content management that aids knowledge work. Alfresco Share also provides a good platform to build specialized tools and extensions that may help either with collaboration or with handling content in the collaborative and creative processes.
- #12: Case Management is the handling of information related to a case, such as an insurance claim, an investigation, or personnel processing. Because of Alfresco’s document management capabilities, folder structure, classification schemes, and workflow, it is well suited to managing cases and distributing work in handling cases. Alfresco incorporates the jBPM business process engine from JBoss and can handle sophisticated workflows and queue management. Alfresco has built a content-oriented task model that aggregates all the resources required to perform specific tasks within the case handling process.
- #13: Case Management is the handling of information related to a case, such as an insurance claim, an investigation, or personnel processing. Because of Alfresco’s document management capabilities, folder structure, classification schemes, and workflow, it is well suited to managing cases and distributing work in handling cases. Alfresco incorporates the jBPM business process engine from JBoss and can handle sophisticated workflows and queue management. Alfresco has built a content-oriented task model that aggregates all the resources required to perform specific tasks within the case handling process.
- #14: DM document management WCM Web content management RM Records Management DAM Digital Asset Management (DAM) Alfresco is used to implement an ECM solution such as DM, WCM, RM, and DAM; across those solutions may also be elements of Collaboration and Search -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfresco offers two primary Web-based clients:Alfresco ExplorerandAlfresco Share. Alfresco Explorer has been offered since the initial release of Alfresco. A power-user client, it exposes all features of the Alfresco Content Application Server. Alfresco Explorer is implemented using Java Server Faces (JSF) and is highly customizable, but it is only deployable as part of the Alfresco Content Application Server. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Alfresco Content Application Server comprisesa content repository and value-added services for building ECM solutions. Within the last few years, the content repository has been defined by the following standards: ➤ CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) ➤ JCR (Java Content Repository / JSR-170/286) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Alfresco Content Application Server provides the following categories of services built upon the content repository: ➤ Content services (for example, transformation, tagging, metadata extraction) ➤ Control services (for example, workflow, records management, change sets) ➤ Collaboration services (for example, social graph, activities, wiki) Clients communicate with the Alfresco Content Application Server and its services through numerous supported protocols. Programmatic access is offered through HTTP and SOAP, while application access is offered through CIFS, FTP, WebDAV, IMAP, and Microsoft SharePoint protocols. The Alfresco installer provides an out-of-the-box prepackaged deployment where the Alfresco Content Application Server (with embedded Alfresco Explorer) and Alfresco Share are deployed as distinct Web applications inside Apache Tomcat and configured for use with MySQL.
- #15: Clients communicate with the Alfresco Content Application Server and its services through numerous supported protocols. Programmatic access is offered through HTTP and SOAP, while application access is offered through CIFS, FTP, WebDAV, IMAP, and Microsoft SharePoint protocols. --------------- The Alfresco installer provides an out-of-the-box prepackaged deployment where the Alfresco Content ---------------- Application Server (with embedded Alfresco Explorer) and Alfresco Share are deployed as distinct Web applications inside Apache Tomcat and configured for use with MySQL.
- #16: The primary responsibility of the server is to provide a comprehensive set of services for use in building ECM solutions. In many respects, the server is just a black box where you place and manage content. Just like an RDBMS, the Alfresco Content Application Server exposes a set of remote public interfaces for allowing a client to communicate with it ------------------------------ The remote public interfaces are the only part of the server visible to the client. There are two types: Remote APIsallow programmatic interaction with services of the server andProtocol bindingsmap those same services for use by a protocol-compliant client. ------------------------------- Internally, the server comprises several layers. The foundation is a set of infrastructure concerns such as configuration, authentication, permissions, and transactions that cut across all capabilities.
- #20: By default, Alfresco stores nodes in an RDBMS while content is stored in the file system. Using a database immediately brings in the benefits of databases that have been developed over many years, such as transaction support, scaling, and administration capabilities. Alfresco uses a database abstraction layer for interacting with the database, which isolates the storage engine from variations in SQL dialect. This eases the database porting effort, allowing the certification of Alfresco against all the prominent RDBMS implementations. Content is stored in the file system to allow for very large content, random access, streaming, and options for different storage devices. Updates to content are always translated to append operations in the file system. This allows for transaction consistency between database and file system. ------------------------- ➤ Multilingual— Support for properties that can store multiple values indexed by locale, as well as support for document translations. ➤ Rules/Actions— Support for declaratively defining content management processes that are triggered when adding or updating content in folders. Think email rules. This is particularly powerful when used with clients that interact through protocols such as CIFS and FTP.
- #26: Alfresco introduced its RESTful API in version 2.1 of its product and has since been expanding its scope to cover all services of the Alfresco Content Application Server. Developers tend to prefer the style of this API due to its natural alignment with the way the Web works. If you have an HTTP client then you can communicate with Alfresco, which covers almost every environment and programming language. Other attractions include the ease of use with AJAX-oriented Web clients. Alfresco Share, a Spring Surf–based client, remotely communicates with the Alfresco Content Application Server exclusively through its RESTful API. Behind the scenes, Alfresco embeds Spring Web scripts (contributed by Alfresco) for developing its RESTful API.
- #35: Spring Surf embeds Spring Web scripts, allowing Surf component developers to use the same techniques that were used when building Alfresco Content Application Server RESTful APIs, taking advantage of scripting languages and a simple MVC approach. ------------- Spring Surf Web site requires access to and management of content held within the Application Content Server, such as to support user-generated content, dynamic site artifacts, personalized presentation, and tagging. To support this, Spring Surfprovides the following integration services: ➤ Remote— Encapsulates any number of data sources with out-of-the-box support for the Alfresco Content Application Server ➤ Credentials— Manages user authentication with out-of-the-box support for the Alfresco Content Application Server ---------------------------------------------- Spring Surf uses a lightweight XML-driven model to represent all site artifacts, such as pages, templates, themes, and chrome.
- #37: This means a Spring Surf site itself can be managed with Alfresco services such as change sets, preview, and deployment. In addition, an embedded API (as shown in Figure 2-15) is provided to support programmatic control of the same artifacts. ---------------------- The XML and file-based nature of Spring Surf sites lends itself to being managed in Alfresco WCM (as shown in Figure 2-16), which offers features such as: ➤ Safe editing of all Spring Surf artifacts, including the ability to snapshot your site and roll it backward in time ➤ Review and Approve workflow of Spring Surf site changes ➤ Preview of site changes ➤ Deployment of site changes to test or production servers
- #39: A Web script is simply a service bound to a URI that responds to HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. While using the same underlying code, there are broadly two kinds of Web scripts: data Web scripts and presentation Web scripts
- #40: If you’re familiar with the Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern, then you’ll be familiar with how to create a Web script. Alfresco designed its Web Script Framework according to this pattern .Within the Alfresco community, the Web Script Framework is sometimes referred to as MVC for the Web.
- #43: ➤ Extending the Alfresco repository ➤ Extending Alfresco Explorer ➤ Extending Alfresco Share The Alfresco product suite provides several out-of-the-box applications that interact with the core Alfresco repository through well-defined interfaces and services. These applications provide interaction with content and business logic from the repository to deliver solutions for Enterprise Content Management (ECM). The product suite leverages open standards andwell-understood service interfaces to provide valuable options for customization and extension. This chapter describes the extension points and focuses on how they are commonly used to build custom integrations and solutions. You will then use some of these hooks in the subsequent chapters to build a custom application on top of Spring Surf and Alfresco Share. OVERVIEW The Alfresco repository provides a rich platformfor building content applications. It provides scalable storage, extensible services, RESTfulinterfaces, and a rich content-modeling facility for building your content definitions and content-driven business processes. You can master and maintain these definitions and processes in one single location. Web applications can use or render the content and access it through any of the many open standards interfaces. This makes it easy and cost-effective for your organization to introduce new applications or scale out existing applications by leveraging a common content infrastructure. The repository can be clustered or configured standalone so as to support everything from very small to very large throughput.
- #53: Alfresco implements workflow through severalmodular, loosely coupled components The core components of Alfresco workflows are the workflow engine and the workflow service. Theworkflow engineis the underlying workflow implementation and is responsible for executing workflows, managing tasks, and managing process definitions. Theworkflow service is responsible for encapsulating the workflow engine, meaning all access to Alfresco workflows is made through the workflow service. This ensures that Alfresco workflows and services that use Alfresco workflows remain agnostic to theunderlying implementation. Though the underlying workflow service API is written in Java, a JavaScript API is also available. For further information on the JavaScript Workflow API
- #54: A workflow definition comprises aprocess definition,atask model,andsomeuser interface configuration. All three of these components are necessary to build a workflow. ➤ Process definition:Specifies the workflow process, defining what human tasks and automated processes to execute, and flow control. ➤ Task model:Provides a description of each task in a workflow by defining the various attributes associated with that task. A UI component can use this description to automatically generate a user interface suitable for displaying task information, as well as to initialize a newly created task instance. ➤ UI configuration: Allows for customization of the UI component that is used for presenting workflow-related information to the userand taking inputs from the user. The Alfresco Explorer Web client allows customization of theproperty sheets used to display task information. It also uses resource bundles to customize thetext that displays. In particular, resource bundles allow the customization of the language used to display information about a workflow or task