Can someone point me the steps I need to follow to create virtual file system(Files are present some where else and the file info will be given by our Web Services) using JLan Server and JLan server has to be running in tomcat and it has to be mounted as

[dviswanath]

I am new to this Alfresco. After going through lot of documentation, I didn't get how to start with.

I want to do the following:

1. I have to create a virtual file system(Files are present some where else and the file info will be given by our Web Services) using JLan Server and SMB/ CIFS

2. The customised server has to run on tomcat

3. It has to be mounted as network drive in Windows.

The technology I am using is Java

[afaust]

I seriously do not understand why this year - after 6 or 7 years of JLAN not having any standalone release and only little interest - there are frequent questions about using JLAN to build custom, standalone solutions.

In the context of this community, JLAN is only used as part of the Alfresco product (embedded). Virtually no one is using JLAN to build any kind of custom solution. The last public, standalone release of JLAN was in 2009 if I remember correctly. Since then, the library has only been released as an embedded component of Alfresco ECM, and has received primarily bug fixes and integration enhancements specific to that product. JLAN only supports very old versions of the SMB protocol which are rather inefficient and also lack some security features added in later versions.

Now, we can certainly help with any issues using the CIFS file server functionality of Alfresco ECM. But this won't be able to help you build a "virtual file system" where the file contents are stored somewhere else, unless you import the files into the document management functionality of Alfresco. Technically, you can configure Alfresco to store the file contents somewhere else but there is no functionality to simply take an existing file system / structure and expose it "as-is" "virtually".

[dviswanath]

Hi Axel,

Thanks for your brief reply. By the way I am not trying to simply take an existing file system/ structure to expose. The files are present in a random fashion and my web service know which files it has to give and I am ok with any protocol. My main intention is to expose the files and do CRUD operations on them from the network drive. So JLan server has to be customized in such a way that it can talk to our Web Service layer and JLan has to give back the files/ folder list.

Is it possible?

[afaust]

I assume it is - at least I know it provides interfaces to plug in custom backends. I just wouldn't know how to go about it using standalone JLAN and I wanted to instill in you the understanding that this will be the case with the majority of this community (if not all). JLAN just is not used like this in this community...

[dhant]

Hello.

I had the same question How to make custom DB driver for JLAN-server ? .

Make what you want is quite real. Take a basis any interface to the database (for example, oracle).  Replace all jdbc methods at http-api (for call Web Services).

I'm doing a similar task. Currently implemented display of files and directories, and the ability to open files for reading.