topic Deployment in Alfresco Archive

Deployment

kjv — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 12:40:36 GMT

Hi,Is it necessary to Install * Java 1.5.x* Ant 1.6.x* Subversion 1.3.x* Tomcat 5.5.x and/or JBoss Portal 2.0 sepreatly for Deployment? I cannot found any Installable for Subversion.Please revert back to me asap.

Re: Deployment

kevinr — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 12:46:12 GMT

You do not need ANT or Subversion for deployment - but you will need them if you want to play with the SDK or checkout the latest HEAD code.

Thanks,

Kevin

Re: Deployment

kjv — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 12:53:04 GMT

Ok. Thanks for quick reply, Kevin.

Can you guide me about deployment?

Thanks.

Re: Deployment

kjv — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 13:27:37 GMT

Hi,

I mean to say that after uploading all the contents for Web-site, what are the procedure of deployment. Will it work if I follow the instructions given in "http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Packaging_And_Deploying_Extensions"?

Is Web-site will be viewed by user by the url or he/she has to login in Alfresco?

Reply me asap.

Re: Deployment

kvc — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 19:14:50 GMT

Hi,

I mean to say that after uploading all the contents for Web-site, what are the procedure of deployment. Will it work if I follow the instructions given in "http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Packaging_And_Deploying_Extensions"?

Is Web-site will be viewed by user by the url or he/she has to login in Alfresco?

Reply me asap.

For our GA release, we'll be providing a deployment utility to push finalized, approved content from Alfresco to a run-time environment.

We intend to support three deployment modes:

1. Alfresco –> File-system (statically generated sites; no need for login)
2. Alfresco –> Alfresco (for dynamic sites; may or may not require login depending on whether you are targeting content delivery based on an authenticated user and matching content using metadata and user profiles)
3. Alfresco — File-system and Alfresco rep (for dynamic sites built and managed in Alfresco; JSP etc. to the file system, site content to the run-time repo)

Please let me know if further questions.

Kevin

Re: Deployment

kjv — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 06:24:12 GMT

I can't wait till GA Release of Alfresco. What changes I should do to implement my requirement as above right now.

Thanks in advance.

Re: Deployment

kjv — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 09:24:30 GMT

Dear Kevin,

We have installed Alfresco and have logged in using the web client provided.

This is what we need to do:

- We need to create a website which has a completely different look and feel than web client

- We do not wish to use the login or create user feature of Alfresco as we have some of our own business logic that we wish to add here.

- We wish to use Alfresco's CMS features and workflows

For the above we understand that we need to design our own site and pages that will use APIs provided by Alfresco. I hope our approach is right.

Do we host these JSP pages in the same folder as tomcat\webapps\alfresco or can we create our own webapp, or do we have to Extend the functionality provided by the web client

Please let us know the approach for customizing the Alfresco solution for our requirement.

Thanks !!!

Re: Deployment

kvc — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:31:37 GMT

Dear Kevin,

We have installed Alfresco and have logged in using the web client provided.

This is what we need to do:

- We need to create a website which has a completely different look and feel than web client

- We do not wish to use the login or create user feature of Alfresco as we have some of our own business logic that we wish to add here.

- We wish to use Alfresco's CMS features and workflows

For the above we understand that we need to design our own site and pages that will use APIs provided by Alfresco. I hope our approach is right.

Do we host these JSP pages in the same folder as tomcat\webapps\alfresco or can we create our own webapp, or do we have to Extend the functionality provided by the web client

Please let us know the approach for customizing the Alfresco solution for our requirement.

Thanks !!!

To accomplish this, you will want to use the new WCM module currently available for in its Preview release and scheduled for GA this December.

The new WCM module implements a notion of sandboxed development for websites and web applications. In the WCM module, users create a Web Project, which provides a production environment for web development. By default, a Web Project consists of one or multiple user sandboxes and a common shared Staging sandbox. All user sandboxes by default have a current view of all approved assets available in Staging. Any modifications made in a user's sandbox are isolated from any other user's sandbox and can be fully previewed in the context of the entire site (ie, any number of modified, newly created, newly deleted, moved or renamed assets can be previewed against that current view of the website as seen in Staging). Once previewed, entire change sets can be promoted to Staging, execute an optional workflow for editorial review of the change set, and then made available in Staging (and by consequence to all other users for previewing their own change sets against in the context of their own sandboxes).

Each sandbox contains your entire website - including your own custom web applications. In the sandbox, you will develop, store, and manage your JSP pages, class files, JAR files, and more. When previewing the site, the entire web application is virtualized … thus, two developers in two separate sandboxes can idenpendently modify and test two separate sets of changes to your web app without fear of conflict. To manage a web app in a sandbox, simply take the entire directory structure of your web app and import (an import utility is provided with the Preview release).

You can think of a sandbox as a specialized space designed to hold the entirety of your website, provide a richer versioning model for web development, and enable promotion of entire sets changes across other sandbox to simulation a production environment (by default, this promotion is a simplistic user sandbox –> staging sandbox, though it could be anything).

From a versioning perspective, sandboxes offer a versioning model that is a supercharged version of Subversion. This includes support for branching, merging, snapshotting, and a new unique concept called layering. Details of the sandboxed development model and layers can
be found on our wiki:

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Collaborative_Content_Production

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Versioned_Directories

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Transparent_Layers

Once a change set is in Staging, a website can be served directly from Staging or can be deployed (replicated) to a separate server or set of servers outside your firewall. This is the aforementioned deployment utility, which would be triggered by a submission to Staging or a rollback of Staging (to a prior snapshot) to push assets to a file-system (your JSP pages, for example) or an Alfresco repository (XML captured by our web content forms) or both.

More details on the Preview release and overall WCM plan can also be
found on our wiki:

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/New_Web_Content_Management_Plan

Please let me know if any further questions.

Kevin

Re: Deployment

kjv — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 13:39:59 GMT

Dear Kevin,

Thanks a lot for your reply.

We also have following doubts:

- We are looking at developing a solution where we want to use Alfresco as a content management server

- Here we are not looking for WCM (Web Content Managment) but only Content or Document Management

- I believe Alfresco server can offer this with the existing release

- As stated earlier we have tried using the web client and some Foundation Service APIs

- Our doubt is about the approach towards the solution

- We want to build a web site using JSP which will access Alfresco repository to search content

- All authentication, registration to be done outside Alfresco

- Our approach is as follows, please let us know if it is correct:

          - Design our own application using Java and JSP

          - For functionalities like search use Foundation API to get access to search and then use it accordingly

          - For all such interactions with Alfresco functionality code the functionality using Foundation Service APIs

          - Considering the above to be true, why do we need the web client that is provided

          - Also for all admin related work do we code everything using API or use the web client provided and then customize the web client

          - Our doubt is that are we forced to use frameworks such as Spring or JSF?

          - Do we have to put our JSP pages in webapps\alfresco or can we host our own webapp

          - If we put our page in webapps\alfresco then a lot of times we get alfresco login page even if we have coded the authentication in our page, I guess this is due to faces-config-navigation rules

          - Is this approach toward developing a typical CMS solution with Alfresco, right?

Thanks!!!

Re: Deployment

kvc — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 06:24:23 GMT

Your use case is a great one for our WCM module.

Alfresco's WCM model is built around the notion of providing a development, staging, and test environment for any custom web app you build (this can be a simply web app using JSP and not relying on the Alfresco web client / JSF / Spring).

Alfresco's WCM module provides a set of repository and web clilent enhancements. From the repository, we provide essential source code management for your custom-built website / web app - support for sandboxed development, change sets, file and directory versioning (including snapshotting and rollback). In addition, we provide virtualization services - the ability to test and preview your custom web app at any stage in development - so that you can test your application code and ensure your site is functioning prior to check-in.

So, what you are doing is exactly why we designed our WCM module the way we did: we are encouraging people to build custom dynamic website that leverage Alfresco content management services. The Alfresco web client itself is not meant to be used as part of your run-time website - it is meant only for your developers and contributors to build, maintain, and utlimately deploy your site to your own run-time environment.

I encourage you to take a look at our WCM Preview release, and again evaluate our upcoming BETA this December. I think you'll find that this system will make the development of your Alfresco-powered custom site much easier and more manageable.

Kevin

Re: Deployment

kjv — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 07:43:48 GMT

Thanks Kevin.

Re: Deployment

sturner — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 17:31:52 GMT

Alfresco's WCM model is built around the notion of providing a development, staging, and test environment for any custom web app you build (this can be a simply web app using JSP and not relying on the Alfresco web client / JSF / Spring).

Alfresco's WCM module provides a set of repository and web clilent enhancements. From the repository, we provide essential source code management for your custom-built website / web app - support for sandboxed development, change sets, file and directory versioning (including snapshotting and rollback). In addition, we provide virtualization services - the ability to test and preview your custom web app at any stage in development - so that you can test your application code and ensure your site is functioning prior to check-in.

So, what you are doing is exactly why we designed our WCM module the way we did: we are encouraging people to build custom dynamic website that leverage Alfresco content management services. The Alfresco web client itself is not meant to be used as part of your run-time website - it is meant only for your developers and contributors to build, maintain, and utlimately deploy your site to your own run-time environment.

I encourage you to take a look at our WCM Preview release, and again evaluate our upcoming BETA this December. I think you'll find that this system will make the development of your Alfresco-powered custom site much easier and more manageable.

Kevin

Hi Kevin,

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you are saying, but I'm struggling with the notion of Alfresco being a development environment for custom web applications - I've traditionally used JBuilder or Eclipse for building Java/JSP web apps. I'm not sure how I'd go about developing a web app containing JSPs, Java classes, xml files etc. using Alfreco's WCM. It seems I'd be losing all the IDE features that make development easier.

The WCM tutorial explains how to import an existing web app and supplies a sample web app - how was this sample app developed? Was it in Alfresco or an external IDE?

Thanks,
Steve

Re: Deployment

kvc — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 18:40:10 GMT

Hi Kevin,

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you are saying, but I'm struggling with the notion of Alfresco being a development environment for custom web applications - I've traditionally used JBuilder or Eclipse for building Java/JSP web apps. I'm not sure how I'd go about developing a web app containing JSPs, Java classes, xml files etc. using Alfreco's WCM. It seems I'd be losing all the IDE features that make development easier.

The WCM tutorial explains how to import an existing web app and supplies a sample web app - how was this sample app developed? Was it in Alfresco or an external IDE?

Thanks,
Steve

Steve: Actually, we want and need you to leverage your favorite IDE. Our final release will include support for accessing your sandbox (or any snapshot in a read-only manner, for that matter) via our CIFs interface. This means that you can natively use your favorite IDE to read and write files directly to your sandbox, while tracking changes in your Modified Items list, previewing changes via the virtualization server, checking-in, workflowing, snapshotting, and deploying entire change sets to your run-time environment.

Eclipse, JBuilder, and simpler tools like DreamWeaver all supported. Don't change your tools! Just get your entire site - code and content - under management.

Also, should you choose not to directly manage your code in Alfresco (because you already have an SCM repository and are unable to change at this time), you should still leverage the CIFs interface to output known good builds to your sandbox and check them into Staging. This way, your content contributors are consistently testing their data against the latest and greatest version of your web app. And, because the code is also stored in Alfresco, your snapshots and deployment represent the entire site, which is important for audit trails, rollback, and recovery.

Kevin

Re: Deployment

sturner — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 21:45:45 GMT

Steve: Actually, we want and need you to leverage your favorite IDE. Our final release will include support for accessing your sandbox (or any snapshot in a read-only manner, for that matter) via our CIFs interface.

Kevin

Thanks Kevin - this is very interesting, someting I hadn't got from my reading so far. Are there or will there be sample code that would demo this setup?

Thanks,
Steve

Re: Deployment

kvc — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 02:13:37 GMT

Thanks Kevin - this is very interesting, someting I hadn't got from my reading so far. Are there or will there be sample code that would demo this setup?

Thanks,
Steve

Steve: We'll include a sample with an updated tutorial with our BETA / GA release. We plan on being code complete next Friday (12/22) and anticipate BETA shortly thereafter after a period of QA.