I need my ARM template to use conditional statement based on presence of Azure Files share. How do I find out if fileshare exists inside ARM to deploy certain other types of resources based on that?
There's no simple way to do this... ARM is declarative and should be idempotent. But you could work around the scenario by using a deploymentScript to check existence.
Related
It doesn’t look like there is any API that can let me check this.
I would like to change behavior of the flow during testing or development. I currently have have a flow that a BNO runs to give permission to a node to do certain things. To make dev easier, I just want to open up all the permissions during development but lock them down in production.
Any one can help? Thanks in advance!
You can just read the configuration file using https://github.com/lightbend/config , which is what Corda uses internally as well, and see if devMode is set to true.
You can see how Corda parses the config file in https://github.com/corda/corda/blob/c533792f3f7015d07d792a849f4f610f3e23cced/node/src/main/kotlin/net/corda/node/services/config/ConfigUtilities.kt -- and just replicate that
Can you maybe create an abstract flow class and two implementations that diverge only for the permission part you want to change?
(even better would be to make the two implementations diverge only for what concerns the resource you’re accessing - in one case you mock it locally, in the other you access the real resource? Of course I’m not familiar with your setup so this might be wide off the mark)
You might simply be able to write your tests explicitly using the “testing” implementation of the flow and make sure the two implementations diverge as little as possible. Or split off the logic that opens the permission and simply test the rest?
I am new to Alfresco.
Am working for a project which uses Alfresco as the document repository.
There is a requirement to create some approval workflow for the documents.
We are still in doubt on using the Activiti in Alfresco for implementation
If you guys can help me out with the following questions, it will be very much helpful in making the decision
1) The rules for approval will be changing dynamically. Could the rule engine like drools be integrated with Activiti in alfresco?
And if yes , then how?
2) The task created has to be shown in an external application.
How feasible it is to query the alfresco database from an external application? Could SQL be used for it, or we need to relay on API's for this.??
3) How could I check the database schema of the Activiti in Alfresco?
4) If the rules file could be used for decision making, could these rules file be changed dynamically from the external application. And if yes, how?
These questions may sound very silly but they are eating my head out.
Please help
Thanks,
Abhishek
If you want to write some applications using Activiti also outside of Alfresco, I think you should go toward using Activiti standalone, and probably integrate it with Alfresco just when you need to upload documents to repository or things like that. Level of Alfresco and Activiti integration is quite deep.
AD 2,3) If you really want to access Activiti tables not using Alfresco API's, yes, it's possible. The tables in database are just the same as mentioned in Activiti documentation (http://www.activiti.org/userguide/#database.tables.explained)
1) Although the bpm is a fork of drools, I don't think Alfresco has native support to that. But still, I'm not quite sure about that. We always used jbpm or activiti.
2) You should use Alfresco workflow API's to achieve what you want. At least is the correct and highly recommended way in developing workflows in Alfresco.
3) You could do that by opening the activit-engine in the Alfresco package. Inside you should find a file named activiti.mysql.create.sql. That could help you somehow. If you follow this link you could also find some interesting commands to debug Alfreco and Activiti tables
4) Define rules file, please. If you're talking about modifying activiti workflow files, no, that is should't be done once deployed. If you're talking about ending tasks or taking actions in workflow, you should use API's for that.
Not sure about embedding drools, but you have two types of code based tasks in Activiti - a script task and a service task. Script tasks are probably easier as they are javascript by default but you can also load other script engines like groovy if you need to. Service tasks are java classes that need to be deployed into the Alfresco classpath to be used.
I would definitely stick to the APIs as was mentioned
Alch3mi5t answered this, but again I would steer clear
I would use a service task for this as you could call out from your java code into another system.
If you use Activiti explorer to add a service task to a diagram, you'll notice a property called 'Service class' which is relevant when the selected type is 'java class'. You would put here the fully qualified class name, e.g. org.example.activiti.CustomLogic This has to implement one of a couple of interfaces, such as ActivityBehavior, ActivityExecution or DelegateExecution. This interface requires you to create an execute() method in which you can put your logic and any external callouts.
To deploy, compile it into a jar (in eclipse, 'Create deployment artefacts') and deploy the jar to Alfresco's classpath, e.g. webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/lib then restart alfresco
According to the Activiti documentation you can use drools rules on a "Business Rule" task
A Business Rule task is used to synchronously execute one or more rules. Activiti uses Drools Expert, the Drools rule engine to execute business rules. Currently, the .drl files containing the business rules have to be deployed together with the process definition that defines a business rule task to execute those rules. This means that all .drl files that are used in a process have to be packaged in the process BAR file like for example the task forms
My team is doing web development (ASP.NET, WCF), and we are at a beginning stage where everyone needs to make DB changes and use own sample data.
We use a dedicated DB server, and we want each developer to develop against separate DB.
What we appear to need is ability to configure connection string on per-developer basis in source controlled way. Obviously, we might have other configuration settings that need custom setting and finally, we'll need to maintain a set of configuration settings that are common to all developers.
Can anyone suggest a best practice here?
PS Similar issue appears when we want to deploy a built application to different environments (test, stage, production) without having to manually tweak configurations (except perhaps configuring the environment name).
You can use config transforms for your deployment to different environments. That's easy enough. Scott Hanselman did a pretty awesome video on it here.
For your individual developer db problem, there isn't any particularly elegant solution I can think of. Letting each developer have a unique configuration isn't really a "best practice" to begin with. Once everyone starts integrating their code, you could have a very ugly situation on your hands if everyone wrote their code against a unique db and configuration set. It almost guarantees that code won't perform the same way for two developers.
Here is what I would recommend, and have done in the past.
Create a basic framework for your database, on one database on your test db server.
Create a Database Project as part of your solution.
Use .Net's built in Schema Compare to write your existing database to the database project.
When someone needs to change the database, first, they should get latest on the Database project, then make their changes, and then repeat step 4 to add their changes to the project.
Using this method, it is also very easy for developers to deploy a local instance of the database that matches the "main" database, make changes, and write those changes back to the project.
OK.
Maybe not so elegant solution, but we've chosen to read connection string from a different place when the project is built using Debug configuration.
We are using registry, and it has to be maintained manually.
It requires some extra coding, but the code to read the registry is only compiled in debug (#if debug), so there is no performance hit in production.
Hope this helps as well.
Cheers
v.
How can we extend the Alfresco database? I need to add new tables to the existing database structure.
Does alfresco support this?
thanks in advance,
sri..
I think changing the alfresco db model is never a good solution. Some alfresco upgrades are made using Schema Upgrade Scripts, and that could get messy.
Have you tried to extend the alfresco content model?
Alfresco support some data types, allowing you to persist data. The Web Script framework allow you manipulate all your data inside your content model.
If your data is not suitable for a "content model", I think you should create a new database to hold your data.
Well, it is just a database. So you can create as many new tables as you want just like you would in any other database.
Obviously Alfresco won't use them because it doesn't know them, but you can query the tables as you like.
Advices from alfresco engineers are do not touch alfresco database. Please take a look at this page.
http://forums.alfresco.com/forum/general/non-technical-alfresco-discussion/where-alfreso-user-details-are-stored-i-alfresco
Changing alfresco database is not recommended.Content Model will be the good way.If such requirement is mandatory than,
You can use spring with hibernate for database connection.Properties which is required for connecting database are all ready declared inside alfresco-global.properties which is located inside "tomcat/shared/classes/".
For Spring bean injection you can declare beans inside any file which ends with "-context" which resides inside "tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco/extension" folder.
I will still recommend developer to use content model.
Depending on your use case, you may or may not need to play directly with the[/a] data base. I think your use case should fall in one of the following:
Use case 1:
You need to setup some metadata on folders and/or documents. You may have to nest multiple levels of nodes with different sets of custom metadata on each level.
You probably need to extend alfresco models in order to define custom document/folder models that best suits your business requirements. Please check jpotts' tutorial to learn how to do so.
Use case 2:
You need to define multiple lists with different sets of properties, those lists may or may not be linked to some content in your alfresco repo.
You probably need to learn more about alfresco sites' datalists, once you do so you may be interested in learning how to extend OOTB alfresco content model, jpotts' tutorial would be a good starting point, and then you should be checking this tutorial in order to learn how to manage datalists in stand alone aikau apps/share pages.
Use case 3:
You need to leverage a relational database in order to define and leverage you complex business logic that do not fall in any of the use cases defined above.
Are you sure you do not want to code a brand new app leveraging a technology that you are familiar with and have it communicate with alfresco using RESTfull api/cmis/.... ?
Are you sure alfresco is THE way to go ? If so, and you still want to have your custom complex business model in a bare relational database:
Please consider using a separate database instance / database for your custom extension, this way you would be sure any new patch/upgrade to alfresco that may change database structure won't affect your extension (or at least wont give you hard time upgrading it)
If you are really tied to only 1 database instance / 1 database schema, you will probably want to precede your table names with some prefix and hope none of alfresco future upgrades would have new tables with the same prefix. You probably also need to make sure to manage your database config wisely (connection pools ..) so neither your alfresco instance nor your custom extension have to starve. (make sure you close the connections you are opening)
Alfresco and Activiti come with a database. It is not good to access the database directly. Doing so can cause unexpected locking behavior or exhaust connection pools on the DB. This turns out into performance problems and other kinds of issues are possible too. In case you want to update Alfresco or Activiti you can do it through APIs. Easy to extend, easy to customize and hassle free integration capability are some of the reasons which has made http://loganwinson.doodlekit.com/blog/entry/4249216/top-things-to-know-about-alfresco-development>Alfresco web development popular among businesses.
I have been utilizing two third party components for PDF document generation (in .NET, but i think this is a platform independent topic). I will leave the company's names out of it for now, but I will say, they are not extremely well known vendors.
I have found that both products make undocumented use of the filesystem (i.e. putting temp files on disk). This has created a problem for me in my ASP.NET web application as I now have to identify the file locations and set permissions on them as appropriate. Since my web application is setup for impersonation using Windows authentication, this essentially means I have to assign write permissions to a few file locations on my web server.
Not that big a deal, once I figured out why the components were failing, but...I see this as a maintenance issue. What happens when we upgrade our servers to some OS that changes one of the temporary file locations? What happens if the vendor decides to change the temporary file location? Our application will "break" without changing a line of our code. Related, but if we have to stand this application up in a "fresh" machine (regardless of environment), we have to know about this issue and set permissions appropriately.
Unfortunately, the components do not provide a way to make this temporary file path "configurable", which would certainly at least make it more explicit about what is going on under the covers.
This isn't really a question that I need answered, but more of a kick off for conversation about whether what these component vendors are doing is appropriate, how this should be documented/communicated to users, etc.
Thoughts? Opinions? Comments?
First, I'd ask whether these PDF generation tools are designed to be run within ASP.NET apps. Do they make claims that this is something they support? If so, then they should provide documentation on how they use the file system and what permissions they need.
If not, then you're probably using an inappropriate tool set. I've been here and done that. I worked on a project where a "well known address lookup tool" was used, but the version we used was designed for desktop apps. As such, it wasn't written to cope with 100's of requests - many simultaneous - and it caused all sorts of hard to repro errors.
Commonplace? yes. Appropriate? usually not.
Temp Files are one of the appropriate uses IMHO, as long as they use the proper %TEMP% folder or even better, use the integrated Path.GetTempPath/Path.GetTempFileName Functions.
In an ideal world, each Third Party component comes with a Code Access Security description, listing in detail what is needed (and for what purpose), but CAS is possibly one of the most-ignored features of .net...
Writing temporary files would not be considered outside the normal functioning of any piece of software. Unless it is writing temp files to a really bizarre place, this seems more likely something they never thought to document rather than went out of their way to cause you trouble. I would simply contact the vendor explain what your are doing and ask if they can provide documentation.
Also Martin makes a good point about whether it is a app that should run with Asp.net or a desktop app.