uPortal IRC Logs-2008-09-12

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[12:23:44 EDT(-0400)] <EricDalquist> so Alfresco looks pretty cool
[12:23:50 EDT(-0400)] <EricDalquist> anyone here have any experience with it?
[12:33:37 EDT(-0400)] * lennar1 does
[12:33:49 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> about a year and a half's worth
[12:34:05 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> mostly from the perspective of JSR 170
[12:34:16 EDT(-0400)] <EricDalquist> good/bad/?
[12:34:44 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> As a whole, they have a very rich set of features and the product has been quite stable in production.
[12:35:14 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> with regards to JCR, they have a good deal of marketing which professes a commitment to JCR. Their actions suggest otherwise.
[12:35:44 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> in my opinion, if you want to build a JCR app, and that is your only goal, then go with something like Jackrabbit.
[12:36:15 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> Such was not Pearson's entire goal. The liked the upside of all the features and the performance/stability story that alfresco could tell.
[12:36:34 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> so... we went with alfresco, in spite of their mediocre JSR 170 support.
[12:36:41 EDT(-0400)] <EricDalquist> looking from a CMS/Document Management/Web Filesystem perspective
[12:37:16 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> if you are just looking to drop a portlet in, alfresco has a nice one.
[12:37:32 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> they effectively crammed their entire webapp into a single mega portlet.
[12:38:03 EDT(-0400)] <EricDalquist> lol
[12:38:25 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> take a look at alfresco's features. They have a great story from the ECM perspective and have recently added WCM.
[12:39:10 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> I deployed their portlet into uPortal, it ran well... but Pearson had specialized needs and preferred to construct their own portlet with alfresco's repository on the backend.
[12:43:28 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> If you do look at alfresco, realize a few things.
[12:43:41 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> 1) they have a very curious interpretation of open source.
[12:44:14 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> sure, their community edition is open source, and yes... eventually the patches to the enterprise edition get into the community edition.
[12:44:37 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> however... they manage the community svn repo in a very unprofessional manner.
[12:45:04 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> There are no tags for the releases. You have to just find the svn revision number.
[12:45:25 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> Also... from time to time they may just wipe the repository and dump whatever happens to be the enterprise version in.
[12:46:22 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> you can imagine what that does to someone who has had to patch something in alfresco on their side. Puts you through hell trying to sync up
[12:46:49 EDT(-0400)] <EricDalquist> yeah
[12:46:55 EDT(-0400)] <EricDalquist> I can see how that would be pretty horrible
[12:47:08 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> 2) They have a rich community, from which a lot of help can be found. Just don't ever expect to get commiter status unless you work for alfresco.
[12:47:32 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> also don't expect your patches to necessarily be accepted in anything approaching a timely fashion.
[12:48:12 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> However, realize what you are getting. A full featured ECM with all the bells and whistles. It is truly and impressive set up services and applications.
[12:48:35 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> furthermore... when I dig around in the codebase... I can see a stack and an approach that I generally agree with.
[12:51:14 EDT(-0400)] * lennar1 notes he probably should have slept more last night... my sentences are even harder to follow than normal
[12:51:37 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> did that help eric?
[12:51:43 EDT(-0400)] <EricDalquist> that helped a lot
[12:52:49 EDT(-0400)] <EricDalquist> who knows if we could ever even use it, lots of politics
[12:55:36 EDT(-0400)] * MarkRogers (n=MarkRoge@addhcp129.cc.umanitoba.ca) has joined ##uportal
[12:56:37 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> gotta go to a mtg
[12:56:38 EDT(-0400)] <lennar1> bbl
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