Categories v Metadata

[dozyarmadillo]

Hi there

I was just wondering if there were some guidelines for developing a taxonomy in Alfresco. Under which conditions would categories be preferred to the metadata that is available via content types and aspects?

Regards

[ukdavo]

Anyone?

[andy]

Hi

It is possible to do tagging/categorisation both ways.

Categories give you a fixed set of options and better search support.
Categories support full file folder like navigation via PATH queries.

Attributes would give you adhoc categorisation (as we have no enum type). The other main issue for the attribute based approach is the support for more complex wild card search. You could create a path like attribute for categorisation but simple wild cards are not enough to do all the queries (greed matching causes problems). This could be overcome with special tokenisation for such attributes.

Categorisation is on the list to review as part of adding full I18n suport to catgeories.

Andy