I am very pleased to announce that we just released the first release candidate of Nuxeo Enterprise Platform, our new platform for Enterprise Content Management, fully based on Java EE 5.
I sincerely thank all the development team for their huge efforts those past 6 months that have allowed us to release the platform as planned (ok, we are one day late due to some installer issues, but I believe one day is OK :-).
The version 5.0 of the ECM platform focus on infrastructure. Strong yet flexible foundations are in place. And we already have experienced that new features can be quickly and efficiently built. And you also get a very nice user interface for free! :-)
Highlights
Nuxeo EP 5 is designed for today’s content management needs in the enterprise. Based on a full Java EE 5 architecture (EJB3, JBoss Seam, JSF, JMS, etc.), leveraging OSGi and Nuxeo Core, it’s built for true extensibility, high-performance, high-availability, large scale, distribution and information system integration.
Extensibility
All the platform can easily be extended or configured through extension points. You don’t have to modify the code to bring in your add-ons or custom behaviors. Just write your component, plug it to corresponding extension points and deploy it! The whole platform is designed this way, making it really modular and pluggable. It’s just a set of components mutually extending themselves…
Extensibility is really a core asset of our platform. Nuxeo Runtime proves its power and efficiency, leveraging the OSGi standard.
Query Language
Nuxeo EP offers a convenient yet powerful way to query the content repository: NXQL, a SQL-like query language. It presents the content repository as a unified SQL-friendly database (schemas, content types and versions are mapped to table). You now can easily make reports on your content using SQL syntax
(ex: SELECT Title, Description, Subject, Date FROM schemas.dublincore WHERE Title CONTAINS 'Nuxeo').
Moreover, a ODA connector is available for Eclipse BIRT is available. JDBC and OLEDB connectors are on the way…
Querying and making reports of your content has never been so easy!
W3C XML Schemas
Nuxeo EP use XML Schema as its native format to define content types. To add a new content type, just put the XSD into a package, register it through an extension point and Voilà! :-)
Content schemas are assembled into Content Type and injected into the storage engine (Jackrabbit, by default). This allow great use of existing XML schemas (such as DublinCore, NewsML, etc.) without transforming them into a proprietary schema format.
Relation Engine
The relation engine allow to manage relations between your content. This is a very important feature to take care about updates and content lifecycle. For example, you can specify and trace dependency between document so that when a document is updated, users need to check that all dependencies are met.
Moreover, is uses the standard RDF format and the powerful Jena RDF database, allowing high-performance storage and query of relation graphs.
Security Model & Audit Trail
Nuxeo EP offers a modern security model based on ACP/ACL/ACE concepts. Each node of the content hierarchy can hold several ACL that contains ACE (grant / deny permissions to users/groups). Services can use specific ACL on documents to override manually set security without messing it up. The security model, enforced at the repository level, can really allow you to model any applicative security you need without the common burden: Nuxeo EP handle it for you.
Moreover, all actions are logged into the audit trail, allowing easy and efficient activity reports, traceability and content auditing.
Desktop integration through drag & drop
Uploading files into Nuxeo EP is really easy. Just drag & drop files from your desktop to your browser and they will be uploaded into the platform in the workspace displayed in the browser.
You have modified documents on your computer and want to update them in Nuxeo EP? Drag and drop them into your browser, they will be versioned and uploaded straight away!
This features is available for Firefox and MSIE.
Workflow Service and Life Cycle management
Nuxeo EP includes a workflow service, based on JBoss jBPM, that allow to design processes and apply them on content. With this service, you can easily create workflow processes for review, approval, publishing, etc.
Moreover, document’s life cycle are managed through a dedicated service, where you can define content life cycle schemas and manage them through workflow processes or manually.
Eclipse RCP client
Last, but not least, Nuxeo Core is also available as an Eclipse RCP bundle is also available. It allows you to create rich client applications, based on RCP, that store documents locally or remotely inside Nuxeo EP. Nuxeo Core can connect remotely to Nuxeo EP via EJB connection and transparently store content into the remote content repository, as well as into the local one. We intend to make this API the core of Eclipse Apogee.
A demo application, leveraging this feature, is available in our SVN. This demo can also be used to massively import content into the repository (import directory feature).
Download and join us!
An installer is available: Nuxeo EP 5.0 RC1 Installer. Feel free to try it out and give us some feedback. We would be delighted to get it.
Links:
(Post originally written by Eric Barroca on the old Nuxeo blogs.)
