Obsolete Pages{{Obsolete}}
The official documentation is at: http://docs.alfresco.com
We can pull this from existing content
Object represent the entities that are in the repository. Each object has a type. There are 4 base types defined by CMIS, Documents, Folders, Relationships and Policies. Every object in the repository will be derived from one of these types. An object will be identified by an Object ID and will have a set of properties associated with it. The properties that an object has is defined by its Object Type. The CMIS specification does specify how new object types are created.
In addition to the metadata properties that define object types, there are some additional attributes that govern some of the behavior of objects within the repository they are listed below
Properties are named values that are associated with each object type. Properties are of a specific type (date, integer, text etc...). Properties can be single valued or multi valued, required or optional. Some properties may be read only or only updatable at certain times. One point to note is that properties can have different names associated with them their display name, ID and query name may all be different.
Document objects represent the enties that we really come to the repository for, the content. Document objects (and only document objects) may have Content Streams (the actual file associated with the document). In some cases it makes sense to have document objects without content streams. Content streams exist only as part of a containing document object. The content stream will have a mimetype associated with it. In addition to a content stream, a document object may contain one or more renditions (alternate views of the content).
Documents objects are also the only objects that are versionable, or for which versions can be exposed via CMIS. Each version of a document object will have their own object ID. All versions of a document make up a Version Series and will share a Version Series ID.
Folder objects are containers used to organize the document objects within the repository. With the obvious exception of the root folder, folder objects must have one and only one parent folder. A folder has a folder path that is automatically generated representing its place in the repository's hierarchy. A folder object may be defined in a way the limits what object types can it can contain (for example, an accounting related folder could be defined to only contain document objects of type invoice). A folder object may have renditions (for example a folder may have a thumbnail as a rendition representing what is in the folder).
Relationship objects define a non-invasive two way relationships between two objects (source and target) in the repository. Manipulating the relationships should not effect any changes to either the source or target objects. Relationship objects are optional for CMIS compliant repositories.
Policy objects are optional repository specific objects that can be applied to controllable objects. The behavior of policies are not modeled by the CMIS specification. A single policy object may be applied to multiple controllable objects and a single controllable object may have multiple policies applied to it. In order to preserve referential integrity, a policy object can not be deleted if it is applied to one or more controllable objects.
Renditions are alternate views of the content stream such as previews, PDF renditions and thumbnails. It is also possible to have a thumbnail rendition object without content streams (i.e. folders). Renditions attributes must include a Stream ID and a mimetype. Additional common attributes for rendition are length, title and kind. The only kind of rendition that the CMIS specification defines is a thumbnail. Thumbnail renditions should only include height and width as attributes. The repository may define its own rendition types in addition to thumbnails.
Renditions cannot be queried unless they have a Rendition Document ID, that allows them to be exposed as documents.
Access control is used to specify who can do what with an object in the repository. If the repository supports access control then access control lists are applied to each object within the repository. Access control lists specify what types of access or permissions (read, write etc..) to an object are given to groups or users (known collectively as principles). CMIS defines three permissions cmis:read, cmis:write and cmis:all. When setting an ACL cmis:user can be used to represent the current authemticated user.
The repository may have an optional change log that contains an entry for each change made to content in the repository. Each entry has a Change Log Token. The repository must expose the latest change log token if it support change logs. Change log entries include the object ID and the change type (created, updated, deleted or security). Armed with a change log token, a client could retrieve the list of objects that have been changed since the change was made.
A change log need not contain every change for the life of the repository, but it must contain every change made since the earliest change in the log.
Below is a list of all of the methods available to the client. There is a brief summary of what functionality each method provides. Keep in mind that some of these methods may not be supported in all repositories as they may provide optional functionality.
Does it make sense to use the descriptions from the book for each of the services (page 72 and 73)
Content Provided From another source
Maybe add some wording around the following:
Content Provided From another source
Jeff Potts of Metaversant has created an excellent tutorial using Alfresco, to take you through an overview of the specification as well as provide you some real-world examples such as using curl to make GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE calls against Alfresco to perform CRUD functions on folders, documents, and relationships in the repository. If you’ve been dabbling with CMIS and you’ve struggled to find examples, particularly of POSTs, here you go
Add the following here:
#Connect to CMIS repository
$client=new CMISService($repo_url,$repo_username,$repo_password);
#Get the Desired Folder
$myfolder=$client->getObjectByPath($repo_folder);
#Get the objects in the folder
$objs=$client->getChildren($myfolder->id);
#Iterate through the objects
foreach ($objs->objectList as $obj) {
if ($obj->properties['cmis:baseTypeId'] == 'cmis:document') {
print 'Document: ' . $obj->properties['cmis:name'] . '\n';
} elseif ($obj->properties['cmis:baseTypeId'] == 'cmis:folder') {
print 'Folder: ' . $obj->properties['cmis:name'] . '\n';
} else {
print 'Unknown Object Type: ' . $obj->properties['cmis:name'] . '\n';
}
}
Today most applications that rely on a database, give you a choice of which database is used on the back end. The CMIS specification could make this possible for applications that rely on content.
Most large enterprises have content that is stored in multiple repositories, and for good reasons. CMIS enables enterprises and system integrators to write applications that can leverage content from a heterogeneous mix of repositories.
Not sure if this fits in this case
Now this may be a stretch, but as a consumer who is also a techie, I love to ponder innovative ways to use technology. Think about how much of our information we get on line, cell phone, banking, financial services, the list goes on. Every interface is different and you have to remember a zillion passwords. What if all of that information was exposed as CMIS compliant repositories that supported some sort of SSO like OpenID (or at least a secure version of that). I could use one CMIS client to browse all of my information. This would also open up the possibility of creating mashups between all of my different on line accounts. What if I could link the image of the check that I wrote to pay my phone bill with the PDF of the bill. (OK so I am a dreamer!)
CMIS
Engineering Notes