topic Re: How to extend Alfresco? in Alfresco Archive

How to extend Alfresco?

agey — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:48:43 GMT

Hi all,I need some help please as I have some doubts on how I can extend Alfresco :shock: : I need to develop an application to manage dossiers composed by a set of documents and information as metadata related to these dossier. I have thought about creating each dossier as an Alfresco's space wher

Re: How to extend Alfresco?

zaizi — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:09:28 GMT

Which is the best way to perform this? Must I use the WebService and / or WebScripts to integrate Alfresco with a new web application that we would need to develop? Or shall we create Alfresco's new modules with the new functionalities and integrate them in the jsp code of the Alfresco pages we can develop and adapt?

This depends. It really depends on various factors. Without knowing the more about your web application's requirements, skill set of developers, strategic plans, etc. we can't give a definite answer. However, the quickest and easiest way to get an initial solution up and running would be to create an Alfresco module.

How does Alfresco connect to the database? Is there any documentation I can check to see how I can expand Alfresco's db adding new tables and accessing them from the Alfresco Application?

Would strongly suggest you stay away from extending the Alfresco database. If you have to use a database to store information use a different database. What kind of information do you have to store that you can't store in Alfresco?

If you want to discuss your options and pros / cons of each approach please contact us directly. We'd be more than happy to provide you with Alfresco consulting.

Re: How to extend Alfresco?

agey — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:25:07 GMT

Hello Zaizi,

Thank you very much for your reply.

I have extended Alfresco to develop a dossiers management application. I have used a different database to store other information outside Alfresco.

Now I have a doubt about the transaction manage. The services of the new application uses services of Alfresco.

This new services are configured to connect new database and use a different SessionFactory and TransactionManager than Alfresco services. The problem is when an error occurs in the new database, the rollback is done in the new database but not in Alfresco.

This is the new configuration:

The TransactionManager bean

<bean id="transactionManagerNew" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager">
        <property name="transactionSynchronizationName">
            <value>SYNCHRONIZATION_ALWAYS</value>
        </property>
        <property name="sessionFactory">
            <ref bean="sessionFactoryNew" />
        </property>
    </bean>‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

The SessionFactory bean

<bean id="sessionFactoryNew" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
      <property name="dataSource"><ref local="myDataSource" /></property>
      <!– Must references all OR mapping files. –>
      <property name="mappingResources">
         <list>
            <value>org/new/hibernate/mapping/Dossier.hbm.xml</value>
            …
         </list>
      </property>
      <property name="schemaUpdate"><value>false</value></property>      
      
      <property name="hibernateProperties">
         <props>
            <prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLInnoDBDialect</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.connection.pool_size">1</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto">false</prop> 
            <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">false</prop>
         </props>
      </property>
   </bean>‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

The new services are configured with:

<property name="transactionManager"><ref local="transactionManagerNew"/></property>‍

How can I configure the transactionManager to use one transaction to connect two databases? Is it posible?
How can I configure to do rollback in two databases when an error occurs?

Thank you very much in advance,

Re: How to extend Alfresco?

zaccret — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:12:03 GMT

Did you find a solution ?

Re: How to extend Alfresco?

prateekgoyal — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:35:50 GMT

Hi,

Did you managed to integrate alfresco with your web application.Actually i'm also working on the web application in i want to use alfresco as DMS and using jBPM as workflow engine.
Can you guide through the approach to start my work.

Please Reply

Thanks.

Re: How to extend Alfresco?

yaziderman — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:40:26 GMT

Hello,

Zaizi said:

the quickest and easiest way to get an initial solution up and running would be to create an Alfresco module.

How is that? is there any related documentation?