Evaluating Alfresco

[faser]

I'm evaluating Alfresco for the company where I work. I read the documentation and made some test, but I have one issue and I'm not sure how can be solved.
I have a legacy DMS that is currently used. I need to import the documents in Alfresco. Each documents has some metadata that are stored in a database.
Is it possible to import heterogeneous documents using a batch process and saving the metadata associated with the documents? The programmers need to use java or they can import documents in another language via web services or something like this?
Thanks in advance

[kevinr]

As long as you can extract the meta-data from your existing DMS then yes you can import documents+meta-data into Alfresco. The Alfresco server has a powerful and flexible Import/Export system. See the pages here:
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Export_and_Import

It is possible to build an ACP import file yourself containing the content and meta-data from your existing DMS. The ACP is just a ZIP format file containing files in a certain structure and a special XML file detailing the meta-data for each file. You would need to build the XML file and the ACP file and map your meta-data over to the Alfresco content model and aspects. I imagine you could write code to extract files and meta-data from your existing DMS for this purpose.

You can then import the entire ACP into a clean Alfresco repository.

Hope this helps,

Kevin

[paulhh]

Using the import/ACP format is the quickest, but if you have hundreds of thousands of documents, then using the APIs may suit you better.  You could of course automatically create batches of acp files.  There is a project on the forge that can help create ACP files.

Yes, Java, or anything that can talk to web services can put content and metadat into Alfresco.  You could also try our PHP interface.

Paul.

[faser]

Thank you for your fast answer. Doing some experiments with Afresco I noticed that I can import files using content rules. The files are simply saved in well defined Spaces (directory) that have some rules. Ok, it works but clearly I lost my metadata.

Looking at the ACP import I can't find the XML Schema and the only example is for importing people. Do you have an ACP sample for importing files with some metadata attached?

Yes, I have thousands of documents and the problem is that I can't do a one time import, but I need to update the Afresco Repository from the legacy and proprietary DMS.

Another thing that I need, but I can't do is to have more properties for each files. Title, Description and Author are the only fields that it seems I can complete. How can I add more descriptions and properties when I upload content?

[kevinr]

Yes the the view schema documentation needs more info! The best way to get an example for now to simply Export a space of documents and examine the ACP file that it generates - look for the XML file in the root of the ACP zip file. It's a pretty simple structure to understand. FYI you can remove all references to sys: namespace in your XML as those are not needed during import (as those values all get recreated anyway) - unless you particularly want to preserve system values such as modified date etc.

You are probably best using the various APIs available if you have a lot of documents to import.

The content/property model can be changed/expanded to add new properties, types, aspects and more:
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Data_Dictionary_Guide
Taking a look at this will help you to understand the ACP XML format also - as most of what it describes is just references to the model structure..

Thanks,

Kevin