Cmis News & Articles

Open source enterprise content management vendor Alfresco (news, site) really doesn't strike you as a vendor that likes to stay in the shadows. Quite the contrary actually. And the work they have been doing on CMIS -- the Content Management Interoperability Specification -- proves it. Their goal -- and they aren't being subtle about it -- is to the first Enterprise CMS that is fully CMIS compliant.

Welcome to July 2009 installment of our what's coming from the open source CMS projects in the next 30 days.

If you're looking through here and feel that your project was left out, we invite you to send us an email at pr@cmswire.com with a pointer to who we should contact at your project for updates.

The buzz this morning at the dungeon-esque eZ Conference Developer's Track (it took a while to find the smoky back room) was on implementation of CMIS to integrate Alfresco's document management interface with eZ Publish.

Christian Lundvang from NXC presented on the topic with some help in the question period from Sergey Puschin.

Lundvang demo-ed how documents can be created using Alfresco's MS Word interface or Alfresco administration and then accessed in the eZ Publish Back or Front office. He then presented a case of creating and publishing a document from eZ Publish into the Alfresco space.

While Lundvang did not show a counter case of requesting the eZ Publish content repository using the CMIS interface, it is reportedly in the planning and under development.

The demo and discussions showed the strengths of the standard but also highlighted some potential limitations as pointed by some attendees. For instance, eZ Publish could store more structure contents than simply document oriented content: a folder in eZ Publish might have its own set of meta information when it is a very simple container in both Alfresco and the CMIS standard.

The CMIS standard, which has been advanced as a work-in-progress under the Oasis umbrella, has been provisionally adopted by a number of systems including Alfresco, Nuxeo and Day software. The current version of the standard, 0.61, has been implemented by NXC first to enable integration with Alfresco but it could then be used for any integration with a CMIS compliant solution.

eZ undoubtedly looks to this project as an example of how an eZ partner, like NXC, can contribute to the eZ Publish model: The extension, a collaboration between NXC and eZ Systems, will be integrated into the eZ Publish 4.2 release slated for September.

One of the final sessions at Gilbane SF yesterday was around content standards: CMIS, JSR-170 and JSR-283.

Many realize there are several challenges with CMIS in particular and efficiently working with content from disparate content repositories in general.

The session aimed at shedding light on some of these challenges and possible solutions in the standards space.
 

We are all interested to see how SharePoint will implement CMIS - Content Management Interoperability Specification (news, site). We got a bit of feel for how it could speak to a CMIS compliant repository earlier this year.

But it's not just SharePoint that we want to know about when it comes to Microsoft and CMIS. We also want to know how any .NET based content management system can implement CMIS. And we'd like to see it in a similar fashion as the work that's happening now with Chemistry, the proposed Apache Incubator Project whose goal is to create a generic, open source Java-language implementation of CMIS.

We may have the start of the happening now with a new CodePlex project in the works. Called the NCMIS: .NET Content Management Interoperability Services, this project has been created to develop a DotNet library that implements the core requirements of the CMIS spec and a toolbox to help you build your own implementation.

It's still in the planning stages, but the CodePlex site outlines a number of items that could be put into the toolbox including things like Business Classes and related enums for all CMIS entities, Protocol handlers, Sample Producer, .NET CMIS Explorer and more.

This project is just getting off the ground and they are looking for volunteers to contribute to the project. If you are dying to get your hands dirty with CMIS and .Net, head over the CodePlex project site and let them know you want to help.

It's official, Nuxeo (news. site) has released Nuxeo 5.2.0 of EP (Enterprise Platform) and DM (Document Management). Nuxeo DM is the new name of the default application, while they still refer to the platform itself as Nuxeo (or Nuxeo EP).

To celebrate the launch, Stefane Fermigier, Founder and now Chairman of Nuxeo created a little movie trailer (we really like the music).

Well, good news! Since we discussed Chemistry with David Nuescheler  -- Day Software's CTO and one of Chemistry committers -- the CMIS implementation project has been officially incubated at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).

Now, let's do some Chemistry with another major contributor to the project -- open source enterprise CMS vendor, Nuxeo, and its head of R&D Florent Guillaume.

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.

If you are hanging out at the AIIM Conference the next few days, you are going to hear some interesting news and announcements from EMC (news, site). Along with some revealing research conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by EMC, on the impact and importance of organizational agility, EMC is also announcing some new solutions designed to help customers work smarter.

The majority of data on the web and elsewhere is unstructured, meaning that you cannot make assumptions that easily break the data down into components for processing. So what do you do when you need to process such information?

OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (news, site), has approved Version 1.0 of the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA), which allows some level of structure to be assigned to the documents, email, speech, images and video produced during human communication.

Alfresco is hosting a series of Alfresco Meetups from April 21 through May 14, 2009. These meetups are a chance to spend an informal day absorbing the latest developments at Alfresco, get some face-to-face time with Alfresco staff, network with the Alfresco community and learn through technical workshops.

Meetup topics include the latest developments in the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification, Alfresco Share and Alfresco Web Content Management (WCM) implementation experiences, and a presentation of the Alfresco roadmap for your input.

Meetup locations span the globe, from Europe to North America and Australia. For dates, locations, the agenda and registration, see Alfresco Meetups for Community & Customers.

Summer. San Francisco. Content management, social media and other related geekiness. Dreams do come true.

Gilbane just released their conference program for the June 2-4 Gilbane SF 2009 conference. Still under the motto of “Where content management meets social media,” the conference is focused on business implications of content strategies: from general content management decisions to using social media wisely.

As warranted by the current economy, every piece of the program is tied to the business impact of modern content solutions. There are four major areas to be discussed at the conference:

1. Web Business & Engagement
2. Managing Collaboration & Social Media: Internal & External
3. Enterprise Content, Search & Publishing
4. Content Infrastructure

While the content management industry may blur various lines within and outside of itself, for today’s businesses every decision and possible impact must be crystal clear. Dollar figures don’t appreciate any form of vagueness.

Conference attendees can select from more than 40 educational sessions, interactive panel discussions and workshops. Some of the topics include:

• Planning for a CMS
• WCM Team Building
• Web Content Management Best Practices
• Integrating Your CMS with Social Media
• Delivering Global Customer Experience in Challenging Times
• Justifying Enterprise Social Media Investments
• Improving SharePoint Search & Navigation with a Taxonomy and Metadata
• Content Integration Standards: CMIS and JSR 170/283

Product labs are also part of the deal. Another perk is direct interaction and one-on-one time with Gilbane’s community of enterprise practitioners, analysts, consultants and solution providers. Registration info is here.

Shane Johnson, Senior Consultant at CITYTECH, knows the pain of systems that can't talk to each other. In 2008 he built a client's e-commerce site on a Content Management platform, then had to write custom RESTful services to allow other applications to access the content management system's content.

So when CMIS was announced, it didn't take much to convince Johnson of its value.

It’s the end of an era for RedDot.

Enterprise content management vendor Open Text has retired its web content management arm RedDot in a recent consolidation/rebranding attack. The Web CMS software is staying put, but it is no longer to be called RedDot.

Say hello to the new Web Solutions family and to Daniel Kraft. Kraft is Open Text’s SVP for Corporate Strategy, and we had the pleasure of chatting with him in pursuit of answers to some red hot RedDot questions.

On the move again, EntropySoft, an enterprise content integration specialist, is demonstrating their ability to provide interoperability between content management systems. EntropySoft creates connectors to various content management and portal systems, including SharePoint, Documentum, Oracle UCM, HP Trim and IBM WebSphere. 

Currently, their connectors are available written in Java, Flex and web services. Today they announce even greater interoperability by making all their connectors .Net compliant.