Alfresco is an free software / open source, open standards, enterprise scale content management system for Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems. Its design is geared towards users who require a high degree of modularity and scalable performance. Alfresco includes a content repository, an out-of-the-box web portal framework for managing and using standard portal content, a CIFS interface that provides file system compatibility on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems, a web content management system capable of virtualizing webapps and static sites via Apache Tomcat, Lucene indexing, and jBPM workflow. The Alfresco system is developed using Java technology. [edit]
Alfresco is an free software / open source, open standards, enterprise scale content manag...
| OStatic Users | 12 |
| Stories | 3 |
| Questions | 1 |
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I tested this on Tomcat, with a MySQL db. Here are my thoughts:
1) Configuration: Pain. You have to go muck around in a few config files, which is not a big deal, but if you don't do it just right, or you start it up before setting ALL the configs, you are basically hosed. You have to delete your lucene indexes, dump your db, recreate and start all over. Jeez.
2) Usability: Decent. SLOW to start up, compared to other apps.
3) Documentation: Average. Had to resort to hunting on Google, and then through the knowledgebase/wiki at alfresco.
4) Verdict: Use if only if you absolutely need something with a ton of workflows, etc. For basic content and document management, a simple SVN setup with post-config email scripts ought to work just fine. That is what I am going to do. I am ditching this solution for now, since it is too heavy weight for simple document management. If Google had a decent and secure data store for docs, we'd be done.
5) Opinion: A few simple changes would have made life a lot easier. For example, wishing to set up email templates requires manual work, and those changes are not automatically picked up by the system. You basically always need to have your admin in tow (usually you!). Make the system less dependent on an absolutely clean start-up/shut-down. It needs to be a lot more robust at startup time. It ran fairly well under low load for about 2 weeks, but as soon as we started customizing it, and made an error along the way, all hell broke loose.
So, see ya for now, and hello SVN with post-config scripts.
A cool feature that we did like was the ability to remotely mount the shared content drive so people can update content remotely.
Great for knowledge management and collaboration in SMEs - great UI and simple rules and workflow configuration allows you to get up and running in a matter of hours. Keep tweaking as you go along. Could definitely use more add-ons and functionality but a good starting point with great architecture - a Java/Spring backend, and a webscripts front-end API.