Apache CMIS Implementation: Is There Chemistry?

The CMIS specification is still in early stages, but the buzz around it is consistently loud. Most recently, the spec has piqued interest of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), as some saw a "reference implementation" ingredient missing from the CMIS recipe for success.

Meet Chemistry — a recently-proposed Apache Incubator Project with a goal of creating a generic, open-source, Java-language implementation of CMIS.

CMSWire had an opportunity to talk to one of Chemistry committers — Day Software's David Nuescheler — to get more insight into the project.

Background on Chemistry

If Chemistry’s proposal is accepted to the Apache Incubator (it is currently pending some administration approvals), the project promises the following:

• a high level API
• a low level SPI
• generic implementations of clients and servers for AtomPub and SOAP bindings
• sample backends to serve data from repositories (including JCR)
• some unofficial TCK (probably)

Check out the wiki for more information.

Who is Behind Chemistry?

In addition to Nuxeo and Day, Chemistry’s committers are affiliated with Alfresco and SourceSense (a European open source systems integrator strongly represented in the Apache community). Interestingly, as Nuescheler mentioned, one of the committers, Gabriele Columbro, has recently left SourceSense for its partner Alfresco.

Nuescheler also expressed hopes that Columbro will be able to continue his contributions to the ASF and Chemistry from Alfresco, bringing the “true spirit of open source” to the ECM vendor. This is not to mention that with Columbro’s arrival, Alfresco got its first ever Apache committer on board.

There are potential plans for Magnolia and Hippo to contribute to the effort, as both have expressed interest in Chemistry. As Jackrabbit users, they would get this CMIS implementation (that will sit on top of JCR and Jackrabbit by default) for free, so the intention is quite clear here.

As far as the big CMIS guns go, not much movement there. According to Nuescheler, Open Text is involved, but no code contributions yet. IBM has a different, its own history of getting involved with the ASF. Microsoft has recently submitted their first code to the ASF, so time will tell how the big companies will react to Chemistry.

Nuescheler did mention that one of the biggest stumbling blocks on their way to contribute is the fact that those big companies need to feel comfortable with the organization they contribute to. The ASF holds a “unique position” in this case.

Taking JCR-Based CMIS Implementation to the Next Level

A JCR-based CMIS implementation has been of interest to many since the proposed spec saw the light. Late last year, CMIS Apache Jackrabbit sandbox was initiated by… Nuescheler, of course, with both his Apache and Day interests at heart. The goal was to “allow any JCR implementation to be CMIS compliant automatically (once the specification is released ;).”

The code developed since then in the sandbox, has morphed into being part of Chemistry’s code. 

The second part of Chemistry code comes from Nuxeo and Florent Guillaume, who came into play and started working on a more generic CMIS implementation framework in a Mercurial source repository outside Apache. But there was a need for the Incubator, if the initiative was ever to get a more controlled, yet less restrictive and confusing environment.

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Tags: apache, apache chemistry, apache jackrabbit, cmis, day software, enterprise cms, jcr, nuxeo

The CMIS specification is still in early stages, but the buzz around it is consistently loud. Most recently, the spec has piqued interest of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), as some saw a "reference implementation" ingredient missing from the CMIS recipe for success.

Meet Chemistry -- a recently-proposed Apache Incubator Project with a goal of creating a generic, open-source, Java-language implementation of CMIS.

CMSWire had an opportunity to talk to one of Chemistry committers -- Day Software's David Nuescheler -- to get more insight into the project.