My question is very simple. I have an Orbeon form and I want to store the XML file of the form in Alfresco. What is the easiest way to do this integration.
I know that Orbeon PE has this feature but I would like to use CE.
I also checked http://blog.ossgeeks.org/2011/12/alfresco-persistence-layer-for-orbeon.html but I couldn't get it to work.
Using or creating an Alfresco persistence layer is the way to go. Most likely this means either:
Getting the persistence layer Alexey mentions in that blog post to work. Maybe you could get feedback about the specific issue you have by posting a more details description as a comment on that post.
Writing your own persistence layer. This might be simpler than what you imagine, especially if you don't need all the operations (e.g. if you don't need search since you won't be using the summary page).
Related
I'd like to add Google Analytics tracking script to all page loads in Dynamics CRM - so I can track and analyze how people work in the app and find pain-points with our processes.
I modified the tracking script to pull the userID (GUID) and entity ID (GUID) and put them into custom dimensions. I expect to use that to determine the user viewing the site, form name, entity name, etc. in my reports. I also set it up to
However, our developer says the best way to do this is to manually add the script to every entity (or something like that - but it's a manual thing done to every single entity). I feel like it's a web page... so it should be able to just have some javascript in the header like anything else.
Is there a better way? Any ideas? I don't want it to be hacky - this is for a production/enterprise system... Obviously I'm not very familiar with Dynamics in this light... Just looking for some ideas.
Assuming that the script is a piece of JavaScript you want to run on page load. Then adding the script to every page isn't just the best way to do this, but the only supported way to do this. Microsoft make available a number of ways to extend and customise CRM, unfortunately they don't just allow you to do anything you like.
So whilst CRM is just a bunch of web pages, they aren't your web pages to edit freely. Microsoft provide a number of extensible points but direct editing of the DOM isn't one of them.
I suppose a good simile here is that StackOverflow allow me to type any answer I like, but then don't allow me to change the font. Whilst this is a web page I can edit, it's not my web page.
That all said its worth bearing in mind what supported actually means. Something which is unsupported typically means:
What you want to do probably won't work easily.
If you do get it to work, the next update of CRM will probably break it.
Microsoft might not feel so obliged to help when it does break.
You may find Supported extensions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM useful.
In terms of what you do to make this work:
You could try hacking open the installed server files to find somewhere to add your script. However I would advise against this as its not supported (I advise against anything unsupported).
Your you can write the script once in a web resource, and use on every page. The only duplication required is to add the event handlers to each form, which is relatively quick for a single form.
Your users probably aren't using every page (and you can't add script to every page anyway, only forms) so just target the pages you need rather than trying to get 100% coverage.
CRM has a set of meta data web services you can use to create fields and entities. Perhaps you could use it to perform form edits and automate the process.
If you are looking to analyse system performance then perhaps adding form script isn't the best way to do it anyway. Tracking client form interactions only really scratches the surface of CRM usage anyway. What about plugins, workflows, data base, and web services which all execute server side but affect client performance?
Perhaps broaden your searches to include topics such as CRM monitoring, optimization and management. For example; Optimizing and Maintaining Client Performance for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
Newcomer to Alfresco and Web Development here, so bear with me. I've so far installed Alfresco and was able to use the Maven AMP archetype to create my own custom content model for the data I need to store in it. Now I need to access this data from an external site by querying the Alfresco repository.
I've followed what I can find on CMIS and was able to execute a query using curl and get the results I expect in a large XML stream. My colleague was having an uphill battle trying to interpret these results using Coldfusion. Now I searched around, and understand that to interpret these results and make the process a bit easier, it is better to use some kind of client like Open CMIS (or Chemistry, I'm still a bit confused on the terminology here).
We've so far tried the the PHP client, but received some errors from the xmlLoad function not reading 'nbsp' characters. PHP seemed like the easiest version to implement, though we're considering moving to Java if that works better. However, we've seen very scarce documentation on either end. Are there some better examples that we may have missed or maybe some other way to do this? Seems like this should be simple to implement, yet it's given us quite the stall due to the brick wall that Alfresco and CMIS seem to be.
If you don't want to use a library, the CMIS Browser Binding might work better for you. It returns JSON instead of XML.
Try:
http://<host>/alfresco/api/-default-/public/cmis/versions/1.1/browser?cmisselector=query&succinct=true&q=SELECT * FROM cmis:document
Shouldn't be a brick wall at all. Here are some resources:
The custom content types tutorial has a section on CMIS,
including CMIS queries which may be helpful to you even if you do not need custom types
The CMIS & Apache Chemistry book from
Manning is a good resource (disclosure: Florian and I co-authored it
along with another colleague, Jay Brown)
There are some Java examples on Google Code
There are additional resources and helpful links on the Alfresco CMIS page
I've not dug into the details of what and how SDL Tridion is storing data in it's internal search engine (SOLR), but I need to build a GUI extension that needs to perform searching on component/metadata fields across publications.
I can't see any reason not to have a look into SOLR, but before I invest the time, does anyone know any reason why this would be a bad idea?
Thanks in advance!
It's a bad idea in general to bypass the API and directly query SOLR.
From your question, I see no reason to do so.
Do you need to index more data than what is already indexed by Tridion?
If not, surely you can just search using the API?
If you do, you could consider implementing a custom Search Indexing Handler for the additional data. Although this is not very well documented at the moment, it seem rather straight forward to create (implement ISearchIndexingHandler and update your CM and SOLR configuration). The benefit would be that your data can also be searched for using the standard Tridion search.
It really depends on your search requirements. If it's just about simple search - then it's probably fine, but if you want to make some Tridion specific searches then it will be quite difficult as SDL Tridion does a lot of post processing on SOLR results. Why can't you just use CoreService and have a convenient supported search interface?
As Peter said, its really a bad idea to interact with SOLR that comes with Tridion. Tridion has a abstraction layer to hide complexity of SOLR query. For example tridion hides case sensivity of the search keyword.
I strongly recommend to use tridion search api to build ur interface. Tridion search api also supports executing solr query directly. But its not recommended.
For indexing additional data u can implement ISearchIndexingHandler. It has some complexity with the solr config files (adding new fields).
We’re currently evaluating development with Sitecore 6 for a project. The client already bought it, so using another CMS isn't an option. The proposed setup would have Sitecore as our site’s content data provider; which would be consumed by a site built in ASP.Net MVC 3. We’d use Sitecore’s libraries to retrieve data from the Sitecore database on the server side.
In some cases, we also may want to consume content data via client side AJAX calls. I’ve been working on prototypes for this to see what data I can get back from a custom proxy service. This service calls GetOuterXml on the item, converts the Xml to JSON, and sends back the JSON to the calling script. So far, I’m finding using this method limiting; as it appears GetOuterXml only returns fields and values for fields that were set on the specific item, ignoring the template’s standard value fields and their default values for example. I tried Item.Fields.ReadAll(), still wouldn’t return the standard values. Also, there are circular references in the Item graph (item.Fields[0].Item.Fields[0]...); which has made serialization quite difficult without having to write something totally custom.
Needless to say, I've been running into many roadblocks on my path down this particular road and am definitely leaning toward doing things the Sitecore way. However, my team really wants to use MVC for this project; so before I push back on this, I feel its my responsibility to do some due diligence and reach out to the community to see if anyone else has tried this.
So my question is, as a Sitecore developer, have you ever used Sitecore as purely a content data provider on the client-side and/or server-side? If you have, have you encountered similar issues and were you able to resolve them? I know by using Sitecore in this way; you lose a lot of features such as content routing/aliasing, OMS, the rendering and layout engine; among other features. I’m not saying we’re definitely going down this path, we’re just at the R&D phase of using Sitecore and determining how it would best be utilized by our team and our development practices. Any constructive input is greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Frank
I don't have experience with trying to use Sitecore solely as a data provider, but my first reaction to what you're suggesting is DON'T!
Sitecore offers extremely rich functionality which is directly integrated into ASP.Net and configured from within the Sitecore UI. Stripping that off and rebuilding it in MVC is lnot so much reinventing the wheel as reinventing the car.
I think that in 6.4 you can use some MVC alongside Sitecore, so you may be able to provide a sop to your colleagues with that.
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.