Migrating from CMS to alfresco

[janvg]

We're planning a migration from our CMS (based on Oracle CMSDK) to Alfresco. The issue we have goes as follows :

In the current CMS,  content is completly stored in the database. We have content assets with metadata which are related to each other. Event images are stored as a blob.

When we want to use alfresco we think we should extract the contentasset  to 1) a file and 2)  store the metadata (publishing date, status, author, title…) into the Alfresco database. This seems to be very complex.

At the same time we need a solution for internal link management. The content assets in oracle are linked on asset ID, migrating to Alfresco would mean : create file and rewrite assetID_link to AlfrescoID.

Is someone planning a same migration ?
Will ALfresco 1.4 (which I believe will have WCM preview)  have special tools to manage migrations ?
Is there a better way to handle this problem ?

[derek]

Hi,

If you can access your existing CMS using a Java application, then it should be very simple to write an application that starts the repo (one line) and extracts the content and metadata, writing it directly into Alfresco.

I'm not sure I understand the "internal link management" requirement.  But you can put just about any metadata onto a file / folder / node.  Alfresco nodes come with the sys:uuid and sys:dbid properties which are GUIDs and auto-incrementing properties for each node respectively.

If you do write something, please consider using the forge for the project.  You may find help from other developers there as well.

Regards

[janvg]

What I mean with internal link management :

If I edit an html page in Alfresco, I can add a link. When I want to link to another Alfresco HTML page I have to

1)  open this other page
2) look for the Unique URL
3)  copy/ paste this URL it into the add link field.

We would like to browse through ALfresco spaces and select the file we want to link to. 

The same goes for images.

We would like to create a space for the images and when I edit an html, and select : add image, we would like to browse to the image.

Is this planned for a next release ?
Can this be done in another way ?

Thanks

[jcox]

The wiki page I've created recently covers many different aspects
of link management, including some of our short-term plans.
See:  http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Link_Management

Your feedback is welcome!

Cheers,
- Jon

[aatamer]

The wiki page reads more like a PhD thesis - we need some concrete examples.

I'm trying to understand what happened with some documents in our CMS that I edited.  Last week, I created a file a.htm that points to other files, say b.htm with the code

<a href=b.htm>B</a>‍

, a relative URL.  Relative URLs of files that point to the same folder worked.

Now this week, I go back to the same file, and the link doesn't work.  I hover over b.htm and find out that the GUID it's stored is different from a.htm. 

http://internal:8080/alfresco/download/direct/workspace/SpacesStore/f36cc9e1-ef40-11db-971b-99746544...
http://internal:8080/alfresco/download/direct/workspace/SpacesStore/f3a84c4e-ef40-11db-971b-99746544...
‍‍‍

First, it doesn't make sense to me why Alfresco changed its link management strategy without me telling it to. Second, it doesn't make sense to me that each file has a GUID within alfresco.  It should be enough to have a GUID + unique filename to determine what a piece of content is.

:?:

[jcox]

Aatamer,

I agree that more examples are important, and a GUI mock-up
would be helpful.  In the not-too-distant future, I'll try to put something
together that highlights *just* the stuff that I'm planning for 2.1.  

Link management is a much bigger topic than than it appears to be at
first glance;  the primary audience for that wiki page is a set of
enterprise-level customers who are keen to understand
theoretical side of things in great detail.

It appears you are using the DM repository for web pages.
Is there some reason for not using  WCM?  Not only is the AVM
(i.e.: the repo backing WCM) faster than the DM repository,
the virtualization server makes it possible to have  normal-looking
absolute and relative hyperlinks.

No changes have been made to the way links are treated in the DM, so
I suspect you're having some other issue entirely.   Give the WCM stuff
a spin if you have not had a chance to do so yet.


   -Jon

[aatamer]

The WCM isn't going to work for our enterprise.  It is too difficult to author for anyone not an HTML guru, and it is not searchable from the main CMS

Therefore we used a combination of Custom Views and index pages to setup our intranet.  We found a link formula that works for files in the CMS:

href="../<GUID OF THE FILE>/<filename>"

you can get the GUID by right-clicking on the content and hitting "Copy Shortcut".  You'll have to erase the left-hand-side of the URL text you get.

It was pretty brutal changing the existing HTML links to just used a simple relative URL. The limitation is we can't link to spaces with a simple HREF. 

If you try the following link

href="../<GUID OF THE SPACE>"

Alfresco gives the error "reference not valid". Does anyone know a way to  link to a space without an HREF?

Thanks

[jcox]

aatamer,

I wanted to follow up with you on a few issues regarding WCM:

It is too difficult to author for anyone not an HTML guru

If you're building a website, having someone in your organization know
a bit about HTML is a given (unless you're content with something
fairly trivial like a blog and/or wiki only website… but then we're not
talking about an enterprise installation at all.  As for the enterprise,
nothing about Alfresco WCM that requires content contributors to be
HTML gurus because they can just be submitting content that's captured
by an XML form, then templatized by xslt and/or freemarker.  
As for hrefs,  why is it easier for you to fiddle around with GUIDs
than just issue a normal hyperlink ? WCM lets you say any of the following:

• <a href="x/y/z.html">relative</a>


• <a href="../y/z.html">non-cannonical relative</a>


• <a href="/x/y/z.html>absolute</a>


• <a href="http://example.com">external</a>

Can you elaborate on what you meant?

it is not searchable from the main CMS

In Alfresco 2.1 you can search AVM content using all the same
interfaces you'd use with the DM store.

I'd really like to hear back from you on this!

       Cheers,
       -Jon