Alfresco SURF

[rdanner]

Hi all,

It looks like we don't yet have a dedicated SURF forum.  Maybe we should put one up? 

I am curious who has been working with SURF so far and what you think?  I for one am glad to see a delivery framework available directly from Alfresco.  It really plugs a big hole in the capability suite.  It also provides Alfresco with the framework on which to build its next class of user interfaces and applications for the platform.  Webscripts alone were pretty great but SURF really allows webscripts to shine by helping to unleash their tether to the repository. 

So here is something I'd like to explore: SURF provides a framework for aggregating components similar to the way a portal aggregates portlets. Now you are free to control the granularity size of your component but most people will settle on a component being an application.  Applications can be really simple: load the image i asked for.  Or they can be really complex: A blog interface for example. 

What SURF doesn't apprear to provide is much of a framework for building those components or applications beyond the basics. It provides access to APIs and services but it doesn't appear to have a framework similar to struts (or whatever application framework you like here.)  The analogy I'd give here is that portal provides a spec for hooking in to plumbing so portlets can be aggregated ext but portal doesnt usually also provide spring MVC or struts when you go to develop the portlet. If you develop a complex enough surf component you are going to want a nested MVC pattern there is well. 

Am I missing something?  If not, what do you think?

[lyamamot]

I'd like to use the Surf platform to develop an Alfresco-based application but I'm still trying to get a grip on how everything works. I wrote my first model XML barely a month ago and after playing with that and a handful of web scripts, I'm hooked!

As far as Alfresco providing a framework, I think that the Web Script/FreeMarker model is simple enough but it could be unwieldy if you have too many components. What kind of "advanced" framework features were you thinking of? I'd like to see some support for managing the scripts and templates that make up a feature for a particular Surf app, like a built-in plugin manager that eases deployment.