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- Dependency Management
- Our solution requires our own build of the Alfresco WCM client, and there are some issues with respect to the association between source and generated content.
- Detail: Because there is no dependency mgmt, when an XSL for an Xform is changed, the files that were generated by that XSL are not updated. We have written our own Java class and added a button to the WCM client to regenerate all files so as to get up-to-date HTML from our XML. Because of this, we have to compile & build the WCM client ourselves in order to add our new widget. We cannot deploy an out-of-the-box Alfresco distribution. It does not always work perfectly, because the association between a generated HTML and the XML/XSL that it came from is not as tight as it should be - there are cases where the HTML has to be manually deleted.
- Alfresco Update: 2.1 fix... work started on 5/1... if an XSL or Freemarker is updates, all content using that template will be regenerated
- Application and Configuration Management
- Full server restarts for configurations
- Too many configurations are internal to the web application and require a full restart
- Detail: Examples of internal configurations to the web application require a restart:
- Workflow changes
- TinyMCE reconfiguration
- Alfresco Update: This is an end of YEAR fix... Alfresco 3.0?
- Virtualization server performance issues
- Virtualization server gets wedged for no clear reason & requires re-start; or it doesn't work, and then spontaneously starts working for no known reason.
- Detail:
- Alfresco Update: Need more clarification on this... talk about this on 5/4 call
- Instance restoration
- Cannot easily restore an Alf instance
- Detail: Exporting and importing a repository does not appear to be sufficient to get back to the original state.
- Alfresco Update: end of year fix... 3.0
- Clustering WCM servers
- Cannot cluster WCM - this is important for all of our projects that plan to work with the Alfresco repository
- Detail: MIT needs a way to host their authoring environment in a clustered environment that provides failover protection. Nightly backups of content could be a temporary fix, but we would prefer to have a more sophisticated set up. It would be best to not put our users at risk of losing a days work if the server crashes. In addition, we cannot afford to lose information for clients that exist outside of IS&T (such as the MIT Alumni Association, among others)
- Alfresco Update: Fixed for 2.1! Jon Cox handling this fix
- Hosted service capabilities
- Does not handle a "hosted service (with multiple separate and distinct websites/web projects)" environment well. The "Company Space" is shared by all, along w/categories, dictionary, etc. We want to domain-ize different user groups w/different apps/projects, ideally each has a Company Space. - this is important for all of our projects that plan to work with the Alfresco repository
- Detail: We are not going to move forward with a "one Alfresco instance per website" setup. We need a way to host separate and distinct web projects on one Alfresco instance, including separation between content, users, roles, etc. In addition, we would like more sophisticated user management within specific web projects. For instance, we would like certain users to hold the role of a "reviewer" for most of the site but also hold the role of "content manager" within a specific section of the website.
- Alfresco Update: This is end of year... if we need a subset of functionality sooner, define what is required and pass it along. Alfresco 3.0 seems to be have all of the app maintenance / hosting functionality that we will want...
- Full server restarts for configurations
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