JCR and Sling quick dive
When getting in first touch with CQ5 and CRX, shipped by Day Software, now part of Adobe, the stakeholders need to understand the basic concepts of the Open Architecture embraced by those systems.
This is an easy to understand introduction to JCR and Sling architecture.
Open Standards drive innovation
I’ve recently read a great article by Tim Berners-Lee, titled “Long Live the Web“, about why the web is crucial for the continuation of our liberty.
It’s a six-page article; if you have time I’d recomment reading it; this is a commented abstract of my favourite paragraph.
Definition of an Open Standard:
- A committed expert involved in the design;
- Widely reviewed;
- Available for free to be viewed and used;
Open Standards drive innovation because they underlie the diverse richness of the web.
Opting for not using Open Standards means building a(nother) closed world, that is far less in richness, diversity and innovation compared to the whole open web.
Universality is the most important design principle underlying the web.
Despite universality could seem an anstract concept, it goes to the basic standard of the web: the URI puts in practice the principle that anything should be identified by a string of characters, and this is key for universality.
HTML + URI + HTTP can be read as Decentralization
Standards are there because anybody can use them and decide independently to publish some content on the web, without asking anybody to do it or to give her permission of doing it.
And because Hypertext allows linking between two URIs, anybody can enter the universal space of sites on the web.
So anybody can build a site and put data into it; but there it comes Isolation, because most of the times data are constrained in a site like in a silo.
De facto: URIs identify pages and not single pieces of information.
Connecting data, pieces of information, on the web, could bring us to build huge systems of federated information, that can be crucial for innovation in many fields of our society.
The hierarchical model explained (and put on)
In my Day job, I often find myself explaining our basic approach on content modeling. Sometimes this is something new to my audience and in most cases I find a very high level of interest.
This presentation by Jukka Zitting, project management committee chair for Apache Jackrabbit, explains very well how the hierarchical model approach can be a great alternative to the old school RDBMS like structured one.
For other great hints on content modeling see also the 7 David Nuescheler’s model points.
Gartner: prima analisi su Adobe + Day
Gartner ha pubblicato ieri una prima analisi sull’acquisizione di Day da parte di Adobe.
Veniamo subito al dunque:
- Gartner consiglia ai clienti Adobe in cerca di una piattaforma WCM, DAM, ECM o di Social Collaboration, di mettere Day in short list;
- Gartner consiglia ai clienti Day che vogliono introdure rich internet applications, form collaborativi, BPM o web analytics, di mettere Adobe nella loro short list;
Dal punto di vista dell’integrazione della tecnologia Day all’interno dell’offerta Adobe, i punti salienti per Gartner sono:
- La tecnologia Day sarà la componente portante dell’offerta CEM (Customer Experience Management), in particolare sul web;
- I prodotti Adobe già oggi considerati futuri ‘fratelli’ di Day sono da una parte la Adobe Online Marketing Suite (powered by Omniture) e dall’altra la Suite Enterprise BPM (LifeCycle ES2)
Gartner dichiara di volere stare a guardare cosa succederà su un paio di sfide che si aprono a seguito di questa acquisizione:
- Quanto Adobe e Day saranno bravi ad integrare CRX come componente di repository per LifeCycle (conoscendo molto bene CRX sono disposto a fare la prima scommessa);
- Quanto Adobe e Day saranno bravi a costruire un’offerta integrata per le grandi organizzazioni enterprise, sulla base delle componenti WCM, DAM, ECM di Day, Web Analytics (Omniture) e BPM (LifeCycle);
Apache Chemistry walks with giant steps
In the recent times, there has been a project in Apache moving some huge steps: Apache Chemistry.
Chemistry aims to provide a Java implementation for the so much buzzed CMIS specification.
If you look now at people being a part of the project, you can definitely be impressed by the heterogeneity of parties involved; but that is the finale of this short story, and I’ll jump shortly there.
Nov 2008 – jcr-cmis sandbox (org.apache.jackrabbit.dev)
The first hint about CMIS within Apache can be tracked down in a discussion raised by David Nuescheler, Day CTO, in the Jackrabbit mailing list; that was a proposal for a new sandbox called ‘jcr-cmis’ in Jackrabbit.
People from Day and Sourcesense (a european system integrator) were initially involved in the sandbox.
Feb 2009 – ‘Working on CMIS‘ (Nuxeo gets involved)
This thread marked the beginning of the first big code entry, since Florent Guillaume from Nuxeo, revealed their existing interest in CMIS and determination in contributing to its implementation within Apache.
And so he did! Florent has been the most active contributor to the CMIS Apache effort since then.
The same thread also served as a discussion for the new name of such an effort; the winner was Chemistry, from a suggestion by Torgeir Veimo
Apr 2009 – ‘Incubating Chemistry‘
The original plan of managing the CMIS related effort within Jackrabbit had to be changed, since a lot of interest was growing around it and both new code and new potential committers might need help from the Apache Incubator infrastructure.
For this reason, Jukka Zitting proposed such a ‘graduation’; Apache Chemistry was born, as a new incubated project on Apr 30th 2009.
Jul 2009 – ‘Contributing Client Test Harness‘ (welcome David Caruana from Alfresco).
The fact that Alfresco proposed (and did) the contribution of their client test harness was another very important step. Having a TCK within an aggregative effort is the only way to provide a transparent, vendor agnostic, compliance testing infrastructure.
Can you already see, at this point, the spontaneous flourishing of the healthy ecosystem, where a standard should be moulded?
Jan 2010 – ‘Contribution of python cmislib to Chemistry‘
One of the two big new updates for Chemistry has been the initiative from Jeff Potts from Optaros, who announced his wish to contribute his Python CMISlib. Apart from saying how much value is jumping in the project with Jeff’s entry, who is one of the most experienced and well known experts in both the Open Source and Content Management scenarios, this is changing (and evolving) a little bit the vision of Chemistry of being a Java ‘pond’, turning it pretty much in a multi language ‘playground’ (don’t take me wrong, this is all about a serious (play)ground).
I hope that some other Python guys, out there, will appreciate the idea of joining Jeff’s work and contributing to such part of the Chemistry project.
Jan 2010 – ‘OpenCMIS contribution to Chemistry‘
And here comes the last blast for Chemistry; the other big thing of the beginning of 2010. The OpenCMIS project, developed by Alfresco, OpenText and SAP, decided to join Apache Chemistry, requesting for a merge of the two codebases within the Apache infrastructure. Such a merge will be about different areas of the project, including low/high client libraries, server impl., test tools and web based tools.
But the most relevant implication of that, in my opinion, is the new involvement coming from Open Text and SAP, with more code and people coming from the already present Alfresco.
From what we could see, in the last, intense, 14 months, no name was more spot-on than this for an Open Source project. It looks like the chemical mixture keeps growing and getting the right potential for becoming a reference for the CMIS global initiative.
WordPress upgrade: totally painless!
7 minutes! This took me to upgrade WordPress from version 2.2.2 to 2.7.1. I was a little bit alarmed because I had not been upgrading it for a long time… today I wanted to get a more recent version in order to install the good AddThis plugin… and it was totally smooth!
Thanks WP for being so ‘cheap’ for my time 
Skype for Mac 2.8 simplifies my nomadic sales operations.
The new Skype version for Mac (2.8 beta) provides new cool features, as you can see in the following embedded video.
The one I prefer is, indeed, Screen Sharing. As a nomadic professional, I can finally enrich my remote presence in many sales meetings, being able to talk and show my stuff in very immediate way.
I used to share my screen using LogMeIn, but I think I will switch very soon to Skype 2.8 for Mac (already installed and tested the beta release).
Among other semplifications, the one I prefer is needing anything more than a Skype installation on the audience side, that makes a lot easier to organize remote – and effective – meetings.
Jira as a project Management Tool
After meeting several customers asking for a cheap, effective and easy-to-use tool for Project Management, I’ve created a short presentation on that. I’ve use as info sources the following links:
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/solutions/project-management.jsp
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+as+a+Project+Management+Tool
You can use Jira by Atlassian as a Project Management tool; it is just about getting the right plugins and to configure it in the way that best fits with your needs.
Girls effect presentation
Thanks to Bertrand, who is always on the edge with his presentations , I was able to appreciate this great one.
I learnt about kinetic typography and appreciated the strong power it has in 1 minute messages!
