Building an XML Repository

[ctanis]

We are interested in using Alfresco as an XML repository. 

In our system, incoming documents would be validated against a schema, and meta-data would be extracted from the XML.  Documents would then be sorted into spaces or categories based on this meta-data. Presumably these could be implemented as custom actions?

We expect massive load on our search application, so it would be good to mirror the Lucene index and contentstore. (but that could be as simple as a periodic rsync).  Is meta-data stored in the Lucene index or only via hibernate?

I imagine that a lot of our functionality would be custom-implemented java code, and the Alfresco user interface would be used as an admin tool for editing xml and managing rules for sorting.

My immediate goal is to implement the fundamentals of indexing XML documents.  How would I go about adding a custom indexing component for XML documents? Specifically, which configuration files are related and what interfaces need to be implemented? Or is there some other way to do this?

I know you are planning real XML functionality at some point, and I was curious how you envision such a system working.  Is it worth implementing something like this with the early alfresco releases, or will it be obsolesced by planned XML functionality?  Is Alfresco appropriate for something like this?

Thanks,
craig

[egabbud]

I'm also highly interested by such a solution!!!

Have you achieved any result since then?

[ronnyt]

Hi,

doing a proper integration of an XML database in Alfresco would mean I.M.H.0. that you drop the separation of meta data and data. Meta data is just a bit more structured than the rest of the document, or might be scattered across the document. As long as it is addressable (by Xpath), it is meta data.

If you don't do this, you can store XML documents, just as you store ASCII documents, no problem, you can search etc. but to call it an XML repository  :? .

I am currently checking the market for making a real XML repository of Alfresco (although it is not "built in" in Alfresco's architecture), any idea's and requirements you would see that have an impact in the market place would be very welcome and we can share our idea's of what the product should do.