Instructing Alfresco CMS to use custom tables [Newbie]

[spulci]

Hi,

we're considering adopting Alfresco CMS to realize a portal using as few as possible Java coding. We'd like to understand at a very
high level how Alfresco operates transaction on custom DB tables.

A possible scenario could be a web-form which data should be stored on a custom table on submit. At this point we just need
to know if Alfresco is able to associate some kind of transaction to a web form, triggering them on some kind of predefined events
and if these transaction can be written using some sort of configuration files (e.g. an xml file which defines a particular table
on a defined and previously configured db schema); we just want to define transaction and events in a total configurable way
without, if possible, implementing interfaces but just using configurations or at lease a well mixed balance of two.

Could you please suggest us a link to a tutorial or to a documentation chapter or any other information that helps us realize
tools can Alfresco provide us about this scenario?

Best regards

Simone

[mrogers]

You are in danger of "barking up the wrong tree" here.     There's probably no need for "custom tables" and certainly not for a newbie starting to use Alfresco for the first time.

Alfresco allows you to model content as objects with associations, properties and aspects.   Alfresco will deal with persisting those properties and associations for you and transaction managemnt is not your responsibility.

And there's a "forms" engine so you can display the contents of a node, edit it and have the system save those properties.    Or theres a large set of remote APIs that allow people to write user interfaces, including web interfaces to interact with Alfresco.