Content Log

Dad, did you have television back in 1994?

Last night we were watching the Seven Ages of Rock on our Sky Plus (Tivo-like machine) that has been playing on the BBC. The most recent age starts with Morrisey and the Smiths and focuses mainly on the mid-90s competition between Oasis and Blur. My 12-year old son, who wasn't even born before their rivalry began, asked if Noel Gallagher of Oasis had Tourette's Syndrome after watching his interviews. Yes son, but it's not nice to make fun of the disadvantaged.

This seemed like a long time ago, but it looks even longer ago when you see this video posted by John Battelle. "In the future...you will be able to expand into new markets at low cost." Click here if you can't see the video.

You have to feel sorry for Digital. They should have invented the PC, they could have been Microsoft (where did Allchin's team come from after all), and they could have been Google (with Alta Vista). But weren't they prescient?

For video on Seven Ages of Rock, click here.

The REST of the Story

As you can probably see from some of my posts, we are moving the Alfresco system in the direction of a more REST-style of architecture. As I posted in my ZDNet blog today REST-style architecture in the real world, a lot of people don’t know what REST is, but they may be implementing it anyway. In doing research for a presentation for a large US investment bank, I was able to discover others building applications using REST-style, but they weren’t necessarily aware that they were building it using REST.

The simple explanation for REST that I have come up with, thanks to Anthony Starks, is to describe it as Web Oriented Architecture rather than Service Oriented Architecture. By making everything a URL (although technically a URI), you can access everything via that URL and use standard web commands like Get and Post to access and update those things, something we call resources. This URL-based update of information contrasts with a very Remote Procedure Call-like interface of SOAP. Basically, every time you access information in a browser or a pop-up in a mashup receives or updates information, you are using REST. I tried describing it this way and generally people get it.

In my blog REST Battles SOAP for the Future of Information Services, I have positioned what is happening as a major struggle, but at its very beginning. What we do know is that there are huge investments in SOA that have yet to yield expected benefits. In the meantime, the Web 2.0 world of mashups and simple access is moving forward at a much faster pace in providing simple integration and massive scalability. Coming from a content perspective, REST is much better suited toward managing and accessing content than SOAP is. However, SOAP with the WS-* are much further along in managing security and providing transactional integrity.

It’s going to be interesting to see how Microsoft approaches REST in relation to the huge investment that they have made into SOAP and web services. From ECM perspective, SharePoint is very dependent on web services for basic content operations. However, they are just starting to make their first moves into REST, driven by Microsoft Live that has to compete against other Web 2.0 sites. In Microsoft needs REST http://blogs.zdnet.com/Newton/?p=14, I discussed what the issues are and potential pitfalls for everyone, including Microsoft, if they buck current approaches like Atom Publishing and go it alone with their own standard.

Our approach to REST is to provide Web Scripts, which is a new technology in Release 2.1 of Alfresco. Web Scripts are the brainchild of our Chief Architect, David Caruana, and provide a way to map URLs to scripts built using JavaScript, FreeMarker or other scripting languages to access resources in the Alfresco system. We already support OpenSearch, which is a REST-style of search interface that is supported by hundreds of search engines. We are looking at applying Web Scripts toward supporting Atom Publishing or other content-oriented, REST-style interfaces as the content industry explores the opportunities. Alfresco also supports different response formats so that you can return data as XML, Atom, JSON, HTML or whatever is appropriate for your application or mashup.

Anyway, much of this is to remind you of my ZDNet blog Newton’s Theory and hope you take a visit.

Alfresco 2.1 for Mashable Enterprise Content Services

I am happy to announce the availability of the Community Version 2.1 of its Open Source Enterprise Content Management System. I know it came out a week ago last Friday, but we wanted to give the vacationing Americans a chance to catch up after the 4th of July holiday.

This release brings a more modern REST-oriented or Web-oriented architecture where anything can be addressed through a URL through our new Web Script technology. In addition, Web Scripts are our strategy for bringing new light-weight UI components into portals and Microsoft Office. Using Web Scripts, the Alfresco system now provides access to its repository services from anywhere, are easier to access content and workflow information, and are easier to construct using scripting languages like JavaScript, FreeMarker or PHP. Alfresco Version 2.1 is available for download from SourceForge at http://dev.alfresco.com/downloads. (Remember to vote for Alfresco for Best Project for the Enterprise while you are there.)

I'd like to publicly thank all of engineering for the tremendous effort around Release 2.1, which is the foundation for a revolution in how enterprise content management is done. The engineers accomplished a tremendous amount while supporting the customers and the technical support team to provide the level of service that you all expect. Thanks to Paul Holmes-Higgin for managing the project and Kevin Cochrane for bringing in product management. Bringing you the actual code of Version 2.1 was:

• Andy - Web Content Management indexing and search
• Ariel - Forms enhancement, asset regeneration
• Britt - Locking services, deployment services, attribute service for web content
• Dave - Creating the Web Script technology while updating BPM for WCM launch & expiry workflows
• Derek - Multilingual services, XML extractor, map-able metadata extraction, core service improvements
• Gary - CIFS Fixes and enhancements (major code merge still going on for AIFS)
• Gav - Link management UI, deployment UI, launch and expiry UI
• Jon - Link management service
• Kev - JavaScript & Freemarker enhancements, portlets, WCM locking UI and web client enhancements
• Linton and Lawrence - UI design for this release and next
• Mike - Word integration and portlets with some cool AJAX enhancements
• Roy - PHP scripting, Blog integration, Mediawiki integration
• Steve - For managing the quality assurance process as always

In addition, new employees Jan started work on extending multi-tenant support for our hosting customers and Saravanan provided prototyping with Flex and Web Scripts for our enterprise network offering which will be in a follow-on release.

I would also like to thank those in the community that have contributed to this release. Particularly interesting were the extensions to manage translations and multi-lingual documents contributed by the developers in the European Commission.

Version 2.1 of Alfresco is a significant change in how we are approaching integration with other systems. The Web Script framework for constructing REST-style interfaces will simplify mashups and provide several out of the box user interfaces for previewing and viewing content, view query results and processing workflows. The Web Script dispatcher maps URIs to resources such as user interface components and data-oriented resources in the Alfresco repository, such as content, content metadata, workflows or people registered with the repository. Web Scripts support access and update using standard HTTP methods and can be constructed using light-weight scripting languages including JavaScript or PHP. The Alfresco server includes a built-in server-side JavaScript debugger to enable line by line step through, variable inspection and arbitrary script execution.

JSR-168 Portlet construction and integration is now much easier with Web Scripts with pre-built components providing some of the most common features required in portals, such as document browsing, mapping of web content, tracking of workflow and tasks, and tracking of web content forms, tasks and assets. These new components use a much easier AJAX-based user interface that simplify browsing, hide more complex information and provide detachable previews and summaries. Out of the box integrations with Liferay 4.3 and JBoss Portal 2.6 will be available soon. Creating new portlets can be done using simple scripting using FreeMarker or JavaScript.

A new Microsoft Word integration built using the Web Script technology, provides a simple, light-weight browser control that display Web Script components based upon the context of the document being edit. The plugin provides a Office-tailored set of components including a document dashboard for personal context, current tasks and actions available on the document, a repository browser, document detail view, task and workflow information and search pane providing federated search available using the OpenSearch API.

In addition, version 2.1 provides extensions to web content management and workflow to simplify the management of websites. Alfresco web content management now supports transactionally-complete deployment of content to one or more web servers. Either all the updates happen or they don’t. Preventative locking of web assets is now supported as is native search of the web site based upon the Lucene full-text engine. The Alfresco workflow, built using JBoss jBPM, now provides task commenting, viewing history of completed tasks, and timers to support expired tasks or timed release of content to a website.

British Terror Alert

The British are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross."

Londoners have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists themselves have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was during the great fire of 1666.

Blogging on ZDNet is Hard!

Toward the beginning of this year, blogging got a lot easier for me. Rather than look for things to blog about, I would just jot down something that I found interesting and then blog about it the next day. I would think about something in the middle of the night or even more frequently in the shower. When I got into the office in the morning, I would just start typing away having enough caffeine momentum out of my first cup of coffee.

The opportunity came up to blog on ZDNet and I thought that it would be easy. I just do what I was doing before, but I would have a bigger audience. Well, it has turned out a lot harder than I thought. Rather than being easier, I took their blogging guidelines to heart and endeavored to be as neutral and unbiased as possible. I also strove to have a theme that could encompass content management, but appeal to a wider audience. Rather than just write what comes to me, I started to look for subjects and read blogs for what might fit my chosen subject of Information Management. What had become a liberating activity had tied my frontal lobes into knots with inhibition. This is slowing my blogging substantially on both on ZDNet and on this blog.

Nothing illustrates this more than my latest blog on Microsoft’s initiative to spread its Open Office XML standard around the world. This started on the 4th of July with a conversation with Ian Howells, but it has taken me until today to write it. My natural inclination was to write the obvious, which is that Microsoft is scared of ODF and OpenOffice and it is using its massive power and installed base to force governments to reckon with it. Instead, I ended up doing a substantial amount of research on both sides of the argument to present a balanced view. I learned a lot about ODF and OOXML as well as XPS by writing a more thorough piece, but it took me a lot longer than expected.

Back in 1988, I made the mistake of trying to do enterprise sales myself rather than just supporting the sales people. As a result, I got a much better appreciation of what sales people did and how valuable they are to the sales process. Engineers in general are somewhat dismissive of what sales people do. Just read any Dilbert cartoon. Although I didn’t start with quite the same lowly opinion of sales people, I have come away with a greater appreciation of what journalists go through. I am clearly not a journalist nor am I an analyst.

Most people blogging on ZDNet are journalists, reporters or analysts whose full time job it is to analyze the industry and to comment on it. I have a great deal respect for most of those writing and particularly like Mary Jo Foley’s column on Microsoft and Dan Farber’s broad range of subjects. Some people are full time employees at vendor companies and some appear to even begin to hold an unbiased opinion on what it is they are writing about. I have a full time executive role, have been in the industry a lot longer and I am attempting to have an unbiased opinion.

One of my professors at Berkeley was Laura Nader, Ralph’s sister. I took an Anthropology course from her where she would constantly opine about the nuclear industry. Taking a similar belligerent attitude as Ralph Nader, she would say that it made no sense to try to be objective, because we all have opinions. She would then use a big chunk of the lecture to rail at nuclear power, rather than talk about cultural anthropology. She had some points to make about nuclear power, but I couldn’t have disagreed with her more on the importance of objectivity. I will keep slugging away at both blogs, but probably focus more on this one. However, I will try to keep the objectivity factor in mind, while keeping the spontaneity of what’s on top of my mind.

There! That only took 20 minutes to write rather than 3 days!

Alfresco Now a Sourceforge Finalist

Thank you very much for helping nominate Alfresco as a finalist for the SourceForge Community Choice Awards for Best Project for the Enterprise.

BUT WE AREN'T DONE YET! Please get everyone you know to vote for Alfresco in the Enterprise category, by clicking here. Voting finishes the 20th of July.

While you are at it, please nominate Spring for Best Technical Design since we make extensive use of Spring the Alfresco architecture. Since we are competing with our friends at Zimbra, why don't you give a consolation prize of voting for them in the Most Collaborative Project category.

Thanks for your continued support and Get Out the Vote!