Archive for June, 2007
Dave Caruana has posted a little article that very succinctly outlines the ease by which new “web services” (in the non-SOAP sense) can be developed using our Web Scripts.
To that article, I add the following illustration, which I hope captures how Web Scripting implement a light-weight Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern:
With Web Scripts, the sky’s the limit as to the kinds of things you can do. Some ideas to get the creative juices flowing:
- Roll your own data API: Perhaps it uses a RESTful interface that returns JSON or XML
- Create a Mashup: Mashups are the Web 2.0 equivalent of “application integration”. Try integrating Alfresco into another app such as SugarCRM or even Drupal!
- Write a PHP or Ruby on Rails App: And have that app talk to Alfresco.
Here’s a screenshot of one of the new “widgets” that we’ve developed using Web Scripts:
Cool stuff, eh?
I’ll put up some more posts on the subject along with some “recipes” over the next few weeks.
In the meantime, Alfresco 2.1 Community is just about to come out the door so Happy Web Scripting!
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Alfresco + Liferay: West Coast Community Meetup
Join us on July 18th, 2007 in Ontario, California for our first CMS and Portal community event. Learn more at: http://alfrescoliferay.osmeet.com
June 28th, 2007
Just a quick note to let readers know that in an effort to encourage communication with the community and to help people make new connections, I’ve created two channels on Jaiku.com:
For those of you wondering what this is about, think of Jaiku as a mini-blog that adds the notion of channels where multiple people can post messages, thoughts, ideas, stories, links, etc. in very short form (140 characters).
Jaiku supports RSS feeds and there are a variety of “widgets” and desktop tools for posting and reading Jaiku posts.
On a more personal note, I’ve revived my personal blog and have started a personal Jaiku as well. In both I’ll discuss topics that are less Alfresco-centric and of more general interest to me and potential readers. Please join me there!
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Alfresco + Liferay: West Coast Community Meetup
Join us on July 18th, 2007 in Ontario, California for our first CMS and Portal community event. Learn more at: http://alfrescoliferay.osmeet.com
June 25th, 2007
I’m very excited to share with you that we’re up to 78 members of which 54 have registered to attend our humble meetup in Ontario California. I’m really excited about the amount of interest and along with Russ Danner and the folks from Liferay, we’re making every effort to ensure that everyone comes away having learned tons about the practical applications of Alfresco and/or Liferay.
I wish to remind readers that this meetup is open to anyone who’s interested in either Alfresco, Liferay or both. At the end of the day, we’re open to anyone and everyone who wishes to learn and contribute their knowledge to the rest of the members.
Now that we have broken the 50 attendee mark, we’ll be breaking up the discussions into four tracks:
- Content Management Track: Focusing primarily on the Alfresco ECM.
- Portal Track: Focusing primarily on the Liferay Portal.
- CMS + Portal Track: CMS and Portal Integration and related topics.
- Practical Applications Track: Scalability, Case Studies, etc.
These tracks will run in parallel and attendees are welcome to attend as many as they want. We’ll be making an effort to record the discussions, but can’t make any promises yet.
We’re one month away from the event and I’d like to remind readers that there’s still time to RSVP. I also invite you all to suggest ideas for discussions and to let me know if you’d like to be a discussion leader.
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Alfresco + Liferay: West Coast Community Meetup
Join us on July 18th, 2007 in Ontario, California for our first CMS and Portal community event. Learn more at: http://alfrescoliferay.osmeet.com
June 19th, 2007
I’ve been using Aptana and RadRails for my AJAX and Ruby on Rails development for quite some time. I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that Aptana had acquired RadRails and has integrated it into their Eclipse-based IDE thereby making Aptana about the only true independent Web 2.0 IDE.
Something that’s even more interesting is that Aptana recently announced support for Adobe’s AIR (formerly known as Apollo), which makes me wonder… Will Adobe acquire Aptana?
It seems a reasonable prediction to make. I outline a few of the reasons why such an acquisition would make sense:
- Commercial Viability: Aptana is open source and I’m not sure the marketplace would pay for an otherwise free IDE. Beyond JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA and Code Gear from Borland , I just don’t see another independent for-pay IDE especially when it’s already release as free open source. Aptana hasn’t really announced a business model, so I’m left to guess that they could charge for support or perhaps for “premium features”. Neither of those approaches sound viable.
- Technical Fit: Adobe’s Flex Builder, though a commercial product, is actually an Eclipse-based IDE. Integrating Aptana would be a breeze.
- Strategic Fit: Adobe is most certainly making its mark as a Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform and tools provider. Additionally Adobe Flex is on its way to being released as open source and Adobe AIR/Apollo combines Flash and more “traditional” AJAX technologies to serve as a RIA runtime engine. Adobe only lacks a tool that combines AJAX and Flex to form a compelling solution for developers. Aptana would fill that gap nicely while accelerating Adobe’s time-to-market.
Anyone agree? Disagree? Please share your thoughts.
June 15th, 2007
I’m heading off to the UK for business, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to blog, but before I left, I wanted to share this little gem from Jeff Potts:
I’ve written a new article (with sample files) that talks about how to extend Alfresco
with your own content model and how to work with content that leverages
that model via the Web Services API. All of the examples are written in
Java but I do include one in PHP just for grins.
Most of the code is based on the Alfresco SDK Web Services sample
code, but I’ve tweaked it here and there and I break it down into
smaller chunks with commentary. I also think it is good to have one
example to follow that takes you from designing the content model to
implementing it to writing code that might leverage it.
As an exercise to readers, I’d like to suggest that after going through the tutorial and the Web Services API, to try out the upcoming Web Scripting capabilities of Alfresco 2.1(dev). You’ll need to download and compile the source code then deploy and write some scripts, but I think you’ll be amazed at what you can do. I’ll be writing more about web scripts in the near future.
Many thanks to Jeff, especially for licensing it under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
June 9th, 2007
I’m very pleased to see the amount of interest in our humble get-together. We have 26 members in our group of which 17 have said they’re journeying to Ontario for our first Meetup.
Here’s a quick update as to where we stand:
We have a venue and preliminary hotel and transportation information up on the site. We’re working on possibly obtaining some group rates, so please refrain from booking a hotel, though we do suggest you purchase plane tickets to Ontario airport (ONT) as soon as possible as those never go down in price.
Transportation and Hotel Details may be found at:
http://web.meetup.com/44/pages/TransportationAndHotel/
The list of suggested discussion topics is also growing. Not all these topics are set in stone and may be reshuffled depending on attendee interest.
Agenda details may be found at:
http://web.meetup.com/44/pages/MeetUp_Agenda/
This promises to be a fun and educational event, but we need YOUR help to ensure it succeeds. Please feel free to the meetup group and use its mailing list to connect with others, offer suggestions and feedback.
We also encourage you to spread the word about the meetup among your friends and colleagues.
If you have a blog or know someone who does, feel free to post about us to help spread the word.
The following link is probably the best one to share with others.
http://web.meetup.com/44/calendar/5819483/
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Alfresco + Liferay: West Coast Community Meetup
Join us on July 18th, 2007 in Ontario, California for our first CMS and Portal community event. Learn more at: http://alfrescoliferay.osmeet.com
June 5th, 2007
This week, Google introduced “Google Gears” which is described as:
Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. Google Gears consists of three modules that address the core challenges in making web applications work offline.
- LocalServer: Cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) locally.
- Database: Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database.
- WorkerPool: Make your web applications more responsive by performing resource-intensive operations asynchronously.
Like most things “Google”, this toolkit is in “beta”, but the best part is that it’s open source under the BSD license. I think I’ll try to prototype some kind of offline sync for Alfresco.
Other Google-y things of interest to developers:
- GWT: Open source “Google Web Toolkit” for building. There’s also an interesting blog post about GWT and Gears.
- GData: The open specification for Google Data APIs built on ATOM and RSS.
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Alfresco + Liferay: West Coast Community Meetup
Join us on July 18th, 2007 in Ontario, California for our first CMS and Portal community event. Learn more at: http://alfrescoliferay.osmeet.com
June 2nd, 2007
