Stefane Fermigier's Nuxeo Blog

Meet us at Solutions Linux in March, too

Solutions Linux is the oldest and biggest trade show in France dedicated to the open source ecosystem. It's been happening every year in Paris since 1999 (it was called "Linux Expo", back then).

This year, Solutions Linux is happening at exactly the same time as Documation and OSBC, and we're spread thin between all these exciting events, but some of us will be hanging around Solutions Linux:

• Olivier Grisel will give a presentation on "Large Scale data crunching with Hadoop MapReduce et Clojure" during the conferences' "developer track"

• I will co-chair the same developer track

• I will also take part in a roundtable on how the public and private sectors can work together to develop better software and content for the education system

Want to book an appointement with me during Solutions Linux? Drop me a mail: sf@nuxeo.com.

Preliminary Nuxeo EP roadmap for 2010

We have recently brainstormed internally and discussed with some of our customers and ECM analysts the roadmap for our planned improvements of Nuxeo EP.

View more presentations from Nuxeo - Open Source ECM.

In summary:

1. We want to make it easier for “users” (in the largest sense, from end users to Java developers) to use the platform in ways that bring value to their businesses.

2. Short term (Q1 and Q2 2010) technical improvements will include:

   • full CMIS support (icluding all the possible bells and whistles)
   • semantic features (auto-categorization and auto-tagging of content, named entities extraction, images clustering…)
   • better Windows server and desktop integration
   • rules, workflow and reporting

3. We will improve developer experience by implementing extension points hot reload (for shorter compile/deploy/test cycles) and focussing on Nuxeo Studio.

4. We will create new packaged profiles, or “distributions”, of Nuxeo EP + extensions, some as full-fledged applications targetting specific segments of the ECM space, such as Nuxeo RM (for Records Management), Nuxeo SDS (Structured Document Server) or Nuxeo Correspondence, and others as more technical components that can be easily embedded by systems integrators or ISVs in more complex product.

Read the slides for more information, then join the discussion on the community forum, or on the nuxeo-dev developers mailing list if you’d like to get involved with development of new features.

Everyone’s welcome to contribute.

Announcing the CMIS Shell (cmissh) - command-line client for CMIS

We’ve been working recently on a CMIS command-line client, called “cmissh”, based on the Apache Chemistry client code.

We have decided to donate the code to the Apache Chemistry project, as there are no dependencies on Nuxeo code in it.

cmissh can be used interactively (with a nice autocompletion console) to explore and run CRUD operations on a CMIS server, or as a testing tool. We’ve included, for instance, a test script in the distribution, called ‘testscript’, that can be run against the Nuxeo demo server and will fail on errors. I’ve also been able to use cmissh against the Chemistry test server.

If you are busy, you can download a binary distribution (built just before the migration to Apache) from here:

http://www.nuxeo.org/static/cmis/cmissh-20100115.zip

(or look for a later build here: http://www.nuxeo.org/static/cmis/).

and test it against our public CMIS demo server (available here: http://cmis.demo.nuxeo.org/) using the “testscript” script included in the distribution.

Here is a sample session:

SFs-macbook% cmissh
CMIS Shell by Nuxeo (www.nuxeo.com). Type 'help' for help.
|:> help
Usage: help [command]

To get help of a specific command, type 'help name_of_command'.

List of available commands:

cat - Read the stream of the target document to the console
cd - Change working item
connect [open] - Open a new session
disconnect [close] - Close current session
dump [tree] - Dump a subtree
exit [bye|quit] - Exit
get [getstream] - Downloads the stream of the target document
help - Help
id - Identity of the specified entry
lcd - Change local working directory
lls [ll] - List local directory content
lpopd - Pop local directory stack
lpushd - Push local directory stack
lpwd - Print local working directory
ls - List entries in working directory
match - Fails if last command result doesn't match the pattern
mkdir - Create a folder given its name
mkfile [mkdoc] - Create a document of the given name
popd - Pop directory stack
propget - Print the value of the given property on the current context object
props - (Obsolete) Print the value of all the properties of the current context object
propset - Set the value of a property on the current context object
pushd - Push directory stack
put - Uploads the stream of the target document
pwd - Print working directory
rm [del] - Removes an object of the given name
setstream - Set the given file content as a stream on the current context object

|> connect http://Administrator:Administrator@cmis.demo.nuxeo.org/nuxeo/site/cmis/repository

|> ls
default

|> cd default

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:default> ls
default-domain

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:default> cd default-domain

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:default-domain> ls
workspaces
sections
templates

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:default-domain> cd workspaces

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:workspaces> ls
demo-workspace

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:workspaces> cd demo-workspace

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:demo-workspace> ls
pictures

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:demo-workspace> cd pictures

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:pictures> ls
pony-jpg
dog-jpg
cat-jpg

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:pictures> put /Users/fermigier/Pictures/sf-square.jpg 

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:pictures> ls
pony-jpg
dog-jpg
cat-jpg
sf-squared.jpg

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:pictures> propget sf-square.jpg
cmis:baseTypeId = cmis:document
cmis:changeToken = [null]
cmis:checkinComment = [null]
cmis:contentStreamFileName = sf-square.jpg
cmis:contentStreamId = [null]
cmis:contentStreamLength = [null]
cmis:contentStreamMimeType = [null]
cmis:createdBy = Administrator
cmis:creationDate = GregorianCalendar(2010-01-21T16:14:05.000+01:00)
cmis:isLatestMajorVersion = false
cmis:isLatestVersion = true
cmis:isMajorVersion = false
cmis:isVersionSeriesCheckedOut = false
cmis:lastModificationDate = GregorianCalendar(2010-01-21T16:14:05.000+01:00)
cmis:lastModifiedBy = Administrator
cmis:name = sf-square.jpg
cmis:objectId = 01e009cc-11fd-4f84-a710-5af9cc12a97c
cmis:objectTypeId = File
cmis:versionLabel = [null]
cmis:versionSeriesCheckedOutBy = [null]
cmis:versionSeriesCheckedOutId = [null]
cmis:versionSeriesId = 01e009cc-11fd-4f84-a710-5af9cc12a97c
dc:contributors = [Ljava.lang.String;@555c07d8
dc:coverage = [null]
dc:description = [null]
dc:expired = [null]
dc:format = [null]
dc:issued = [null]
dc:language = [null]
dc:rights = [null]
dc:source = [null]
dc:subjects = [null]
dc:title = sf-square.jpg
dc:valid = [null]
filename = [null]
icon = /icons/file.gif
icon-expanded = [null]
major_version = 1
minor_version = 0
size = [null]
uid = [null]

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:pictures> get sf-square.jpg
Object stream saved to local file: ./sf-square.jpg

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:pictures> lls
sf-square.jpg

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:pictures> id
Object 0a37ffea-fd65-4e78-b3bc-074168dd99f9 of type PictureBook

|cmis.demo.nuxeo.org:pictures> quit
Bye

Damien Metzler on the benefits of contributing to the Nuxeo code base

Damien Metlzer, who's with Leroy Merlin and has been working on OpenSocial integration in Nuxeo EP, has an extensive blog post about the history of this significant contribution to the Nuxeo EP code base.

Here are, according to him, some of the benefits of contributing to Nuxeo:

• Our code is reviewed by Nuxeo Architects and well integrated in the core distribution.
• We had to make the generic code generic, and make the specific parts plugin of it.  I really think its a proof a quality and that i made us ask for the good questions.
• Apart from making the code generic, it did cost us nothing
• I think that the value of a portal is the number of app you can integrate into it. Theorically we have all iGoogle gadgets that are integrable (and that makes a lot ;-) ). I other people contribute by making "Enterprise ready gadgets" on top of the Nuxeo Platform, we will gain benefit from it (if you want some ideas, call me ;-) )
• As funny as it could be, as we have a Nuxeo Connect Support, we could post JIRA tickets about our own bugs (really funny :-p)

So once again, many thanks to you and your team on behalf of the Nuxeo community.

Video interview shot during the Open World Forum

Here is a video interview of me shot by TiViPro during the recent Open World Forum un Paris.

Here is a rough transcript:

Nuxeo is the pioneer and leader of ECM. Our software is used by large companies throughout the world to help them manage all their documents and digital assets, such as images or emails.

Nuxeo is an open source vendor. That means we are developing a platform, a technology, in a completely open source and transparent way. Everyone can access our source code, make contributions and participate in our community. And we work with partners, such as systems integrators or vertical application vendors, to help them create specific applications that are used by the end users. These applications can deal with aspects such as collaboration, workflow, compliance on processes around documents. Since our technology is base on open source Java, it is very easy to set up, to customize and to extend for systems integrators, because a lot of people around the world already know the Java programming language, and there are a lot of supporting tools.

Nuxeo is quite satisfied by its current situation. We are selling new contracts every day in several different countries. We are growing, in France and in the USA, and we are looking for 15 new people to hire in our team.

A similar interview has also been conducted in French.

Interview with Cheryl McKinnon, CMO at Nuxeo, at ARMA

Here is a video interview of Cheryl McKinnon, our recently hired Chief of Marketing, by FierceContentManagement, on how life is different in an open source ECM firm such as Nuxeo, wrt her former job at OpenText.

Original post here.

Help Test the Nuxeo 5.3 Release Candidate

Nuxeo EP 5.3 has recently been published as a release candidate (RC), and will soon become generally available (GA).

Announcement

The full announcement, detailing the major new features in Nuxeo 5.3 wrt Nuxeo 5.2, is available on the Nuxeo corporate site.

Here is a short summary: the most notable enhancements include a new tag service, an improved import/export service, a CMIS implementation based on Apache Chemistry, performance tuning after extended… benchmarks, WSS (MS SharePoint) support, and OpenSocial widgets support.

We’ve also made 3 short videos to showcase some of the most important new features in this release.

Buzz

• TechCrunch
• CMS Wire
• Announcement on Freshmeat
• Neteco (in French)

Next steps

Remember that this a a release candidate, which should be tested as much as possible before the final (GA) release.

10 bugs have discovered so far, and are being actively exterminated by our diligent development team:

Your help is needed to find more (assuming there are any).

You can help by downloading the document management application(Nuxeo DM) based on Nuxeo EP, and reporting bugs or issues to the forum or on the Jira bugtracker.

NKM et le libre - retour sur la convention System@tic

Hier avait lieu la convention annuelle du Pôle System@tic, la deuxième depuis la création du Groupe Thématique dédié au logiciel libre.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, Secrétaire d'Etat à l'Economie numérique, nous a fait l’honneur d’une longue visite de l’espace exposition, où étaient présentés les 9 projets financés labellisés par le GT et les démos de deux des projets les plus avancés: Scribo et Squale, dans deux des axes technologiques stratégiques du GT: les composants et services pour l’entreprise “3.0” (technologies sémantiques appliquées aux besoins de l’entreprise) et les outils de développement collaboratifs (en l’occurrence, la qualimétrie).

Lors de son discours (qui m’a touché par sa spontanéité), j’ai noté les observations suivantes:

• Le logiciel libre est omniprésent y compris dans les projets qui ne dépendent pas de notre GT (plusieurs des projets mis en avant par les autres GT comprenaient aussi une composante logicielle libre) .

• Elle estime de ce fait qu’on ne peut plus innover dans le secteur des TIC sans intégrer une part de logiciel libre.

• Enfin, concernant les mesures de son plan de relance, elle a observé que “les mesure les plus simple à mettre en oeuvre sont celles qui ne nécessitent pas d’arbitrage budgétaire”, autrement dit, priorité aux propositions qui n'entraînent pas de besoin de financement nouveau.

Sur ce dernier point, cela m’a fait penser que la majeure partie des propositions que nous mettons en avant en faveur de la “relance par le libre”, par exemple dans le cadre de PLOSS ou dans le cadre de la prochaine édition de la FLOSS Roadmap, rentrent dans ce cadre (ex: non-discrimination dans les appels d’offres, recommandations claires et actionables sur l’usage des logiciels libres dans l’administration, meilleur alignement des formations sur les besoins de recrutement en spécialistes du logiciel libre, des choix clairs en faveur de l’intéropérabilité et des standard ouverts, etc.).