Cmis News & Articles

Nuxeo (news, site) has rounded up 2009 with reports of triple-digit growth in revenue and subscriber base numbers, as well as a look at how the open source Enterprise CMS vendor plans to tackle the overcrowded and mature ECM market.

Portals and content management systems are widely used in organizations today. For many, the desire to integrate them into a single collaborative environment is critical. But there's a lot to think about before moving forward. In this article we cover the basic considerations for integrating a CMS into an enterprise portal.

Following Apache Chemistry’s suit, another Java-based and open source implementation of the CMIS specification hit the streets. Meet xCMIS -- a server side implementation of CMIS developed by eXo (news, site).

Currently in xCMIS 1.0 beta1, xCMIS supports eXo's Java Content Repository (JCR), third-party CMIS clients, new eXo CMIS client based on Google Web Toolkit (GWT), and an integration with the GateIn portal.

The implementation is done according to Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) version 1.0 draft 06 for REST AtomPub and Web Services (SOAP/WSDL) protocol bindings.

So far, the implementation (packaged as J2EE .war, or as an Apache Tomcat bundle) includes the following:

• CMIS server
• InMemory for testing purpose
• Client for accessing CMIS-compliant repositories

eXo reports that it has tested their implementation with other CMIS clients, such as IBM CMIS Firefox Connector and CMIS Spaces Flex+AIR client.

Curious? Check out these resources:

• Downloads are available here
• Source code is hosted on Google
• More project info is here
• Play with the latest demos

Just recently, we reported on Nuxeo’s (news, site) steady progress with Apache Chemistry, a Java implementation of the CMIS spec.

The newest development on this front is OpenCMIS (a project led by Alfresco, SAP and Open Text) that is adding their collection of libraries, frameworks and tools around CMIS to Apache Chemistry.

No, it is *not* an attack against Chemistry, but more of a friendly merger.

Many people may have spent their time wondering what will happen with Vignette now that Open Text acquired the company, but EntropySoft (news, site) doesn't seem to be one of them. Instead, they have spent their time working on an enterprise connector, making interoperability with Vignette that much easier.

Apache Chemistry (we introduced you to some time ago) is progressing under the watchful eye of Enterprise CMS vendor Nuxeo (news, site) and other contributors. The latest news -- updated Nuxeo Chemistry bindings to allow for better support for CMIS.

dotCMS (news, site) is getting ready to dot the i's and cross the t's on version 1.9 Community Edition release of their open source J2EE/Java Web CMS. You can see the progress by checking out the just released “Developer Preview.”

To give you a little taste of what to expect in the upcoming release:

• New UI built using the Dojo toolkit with UX improvements
• Improved multi-site management for large scale scenarios
• Interoperability via a CMIS interface
• i18n compliant admin tools for better internationalization
• Changes to roles and permissions model with substitution of groups for hierarchical roles and role membership
• New Form Builder Tool for web data collection

Trial download (still buggy, not recommended for production environments) can be found here. Currently in beta, the GA release of 1.9 is expected shortly.

Later this year, dotCMS also plans to release “the code-hardened enterprise version” of their product based on version 1.9 Community Edition.

Oh to have been a fly on the wall at Lotusphere 2010 this past week. With what seemed like a never-ending ode to enterprise social computing, IBM (news, site) announced a number of updates and new projects that must have generated lots of excited whispers in the corners.

KnowledgeTree (news, site) partners with CAPSYS to bring online document capture for businesses working in the cloud.

Normally in this space we look back over the current month and forward into the next month at what the various open source CMS projects are up to. But rather than blindly putting out an update for January, we thought we'd look farther ahead into what everyone wants to accomplish throughout next year. Call it our open source 2010 predictions with less guesswork and high hopes.

Here's a quickie for you: John Newton, Alfresco (news, site) Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, was recently named to the AIIM Board of Directors.

The board is comprised of what the company is calling "the 'who's who' of the Enterprise Content Management industry elite" and, after reviewing Newton's background, we'd say he's certainly paid his dues for the title. His achievements include co-founding Documentum (acquired by EMC), and as a member of the OASIS Technical Committee he has helped to spread the Content Management Interoperability Standard (CMIS). 

His CMIS efforts can be seen within Alfresco Community 3.2, which implemented CMIS 1.0 in November of this year. 

"John brings years of experience in all facets of the document and content management history," said AIIM President John Mancini. "His extensive knowledge of this industry is second to none and he will be a welcome addition to our board. I look forward to John's participation and counsel." 

WCM Fields Notes is a regular column written in collaboration with Jon Marks (@McBoof), head of development at LBi. This first issue looks at evolving standards in the content management space and how they might influence you when selecting and implementing a web content management system.

In August, KnowledgeTree (news, site) announced their support for the upcoming CMIS specification. Now with the release of v3.7 of their document managment system, they put their support into action.

Open source dotCMS (news, site) announced that the upcoming 1.9 release will feature an implementation of CMIS v1.0, which is currently in public review.

According to the vendor, Will Ezell, CTO, has been working with other content management vendors supporting CMIS -- IBM, Alfresco, others -- who are part of the founding members of the specification.

dotCMS says it plans to invest in CMIS to help decrease the amount of connector and integration work on the customer’s part. “The big win is the huge increase in the amount of content available to all. dotCMS felt that CMIS would be very attractive to larger enterprises -- a key target for the company,” said Bill Beardslee, SVP, strategy and development.

“Fresh, highly relevant content is the most crucial aspect of building traffic and converting visitors into customers. CMIS unlocks the power of a content repository, creating opportunities for those organizations that know how to pair content with commercial opportunities,” added Ezell.

dotCMS, who is also an OASIS TC member, plans to roll out their CMIS implementation iteratively. Version 1.9 is scheduled to go GA in Q1 2010 and will include a draft implementation that will be finalized by release 2.0 some time in Q3 2010.

And for those of you having as much fun as we are at Gilbane Boston, check out dotCMS' product lab on Thursday.

Not long after announcing their new EMC Documentum DFS Connector, EntropySoft (news, site) officially announces they can also connect to EMC CenterStage and that they will support CMIS.