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Comparisons

Hello,

I am doing some comparisons between different systems to make my entreprise switch to a correct ECMS…
Anyway, I have a few facts but I would like your feed back.

What is the biggest advantages that you have found and used in Alfresco compared to:
* Nuxeo 5
* Documentum
* MS Sharepoint Services
?

Thanks

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Comments

kurtkbee

Hello,

I am doing some comparisons between different systems to make my entreprise switch to a correct ECMS…
Anyway, I have a few facts but I would like your feed back.

What is the biggest advantages that you have found and used in Alfresco compared to:
* Nuxeo 5
* Documentum
* MS Sharepoint Services
?

Thanks

I really hope someone replies to this post. If even for a comparison with nuxeo5. I must admit Nuxeo seems like an interesting product (though i am not sure if it is GPL).

What i find strange is that there are so many mature OpenSource document management systems available, but Alfresco and Nuxeo seem to lead the pack.

-Kurt

dozyarmadillo

CMSWatch.com have recently published report of 30 ECM products including SharePoint, Documentum, Nuxeo & Alfresco. I haven't read it yet (need to convince my boss first).

I've used/developed Documentum and SharePoint but have had limited exposure to Alfresco. What I've seen so far is very impressive though:

Performance - it's like light speed compared to Documentum Webtop

CIFS support - great feature, much better than WEBDAV, zero client footprint as well!

Smart spaces - really like this, there's no equivalent in MOSS/Webtop

Usability - nice default user interface, much better layout out than Webtop/MOSS

Javascript API - very nice. You can invoke custom code in Documentum via the Business Objects Framework, the Method Server, DocBasic, etc but you need to develop/deploy JARs/scripts server side so its more effort and not as flexible. You can override the document lifecycle in MOSS as well but be prepared to develop/deploy. MOSS doesn't support a scripting language but I guess you could integrate BOO if you were smart and determined.

DM seems very well executed!

Stuff that could be better:

WCM - still haven't got my head around this yet. Seems to me that Alfresco facilitates generation of static content and that you have to write your own components in whatever language you prefer for dynamic behaviour. This appears to be the opposite of MOSS where you build a dynamic website using site content/components (i.e. MOSS WCM sites sit on top of the repository).

Personalisation - is there a way for the user to set the default view type (i.e. detailed rather than icons)?

Accessibility - had a look at the Alfresco 1.4 markup in the Community Site. Aargh - reminds me of SharePoint! Needless to say to failed validation.

Configuration - OK it's Spring so XML it is - I get it and yes it's very flexible but reloading the webapp to implement changes seems like taking a step back. Point and click would also make life easier for support staff. How about using Groovy? I thought that Spring+Groovy could be used for reloadable beans?

The finishing touches - the core repository is very innovative but I'm waiting to see if Alfresco will polish off the product with stuff that I'm used to in Documentum (e.g. comprehensive value assistance, virtual documents, implementing repository configuration changes without restarting the webapp - data dictionary, scheduled jobs, etc).

Community - incredible though it seems there is more chance of getting free online assistance for Documentum and SharePoint issues than for Alfresco. I am very impressed that members of Alfresco respond to some of the posts (especially given that support is one of their revenue streams). Having said that, I am a little concerned to see so many unanswered posts on the forums.

Documentation - it's not like there's nothing but there could be more and it could be structured better. For example, the online docs for the Spring Framework are very nice. The online Django book is another great example.

XForms for DM - yes, I realise that I'm not the first to mention this.

I hope that some of the above features start dropping in once Alfresco have finished with their major architectural changes (AVM, etc).

kurtkbee

Wow this is great info !! just what i was looking for.

jcox

WCM - still haven't got my head around this yet.
Seems to me that Alfresco facilitates generation of static content and that
you have to write your own components in whatever language you prefer
for dynamic behaviour. This appears to be the opposite of MOSS where
you build a dynamic website using site content/components (i.e. MOSS
WCM sites sit on top of the repository).

WCM lets you develop and virtualize both static and dynamic websites…
and a whole lot more.

To the best of my knowledge, Alfresco has the only product on the
market (open or closed source) that lets you virtualize a collaborative
development environment for webapps, JSPs, and static content.
This is made possible by the AVM (our new versioning content repository)
and the tomcat-based virtualization server. For more information about
what this virtualization is and how it works, see:
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Virtualization_Server_FAQ

Imagine this: suppose you've got a bunch of users each has their own
"virtual view" of the website that does not show the changes they've
made until they've submitted them & those submissions have been
approved via a workflow. WCM sandboxes allow content contributors
and reviewers to see all proposed changes in-context just as if every
user had full read/write access to the central copy in the "staging" area.
For more information about collaborative content production see:
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Collaborative_Content_Production

WCM also supports auto-generated web forms that let you
collect information from content contributors, store that
data in a structured way (within XML records), create
custom indexes for metadata-based queries, and render
the XML data you collected via XSLT or freemarker templates
as HTML files, pdf, or whatever else you'd like.

This means that all your content contributors don't have to
be HTML wizards, they can just fill out auto-generated forms.
The look and feel of your website can thus be controlled
in a fully skinnable way by the much smaller subset of
developers at your site that *are* html/jsp/servlet wizards…
and they get to enjoy all the same flexibility they'd get in
a non-virtualized environment.

Every user's virtual webapp has a 1:1 correspondence
with a virtual host, so unlike cookie-based virtualization,
you can see multiple virtual views of the website at the same time
(which is great for reviewers & authors comparing their changeset
to staging), set bookmarks to virtual views in your browser just as you
would with a non-virtualized site, send links to virtualized assets via
email, etc.


In version 2.1, WCM also has built-in link validation.
This lets users and reviewers determine what a proposed
set of changes would break in staging, and allows the status
of all links in staging to be scanned in a scalable way
(this includes both internal and external http & https links).

WCM also supports SVN-like time travel in that version "snapshots"
are taken of entire directory systems, rather than single assets.
Unlike simple single-item versioning, this means you can look at
everything as it was at a particular moment, not just a file-at-a-time.
For those familiar with CVS, it's as if you always had a unique tag
for every checkin.

There are a lot of very powerful features here, and one point that
dozyarmadillo made I'd whole-heartedly agree with is that our docs
need more structure, examples, and coverage.    This will come.
Our enterprise customers enjoy fuller access to support and training,
which makes their lives easier… but we want *everybody* to succeed,
and that means more docs, examples, out-of-the-box solutions,
and polish.   We're growing very fast, and see this as essential to
scaling up even more.

As an engineer that quit a closed-source company to work at Alfresco,
I'm also personally committed to seeing enterprise-level features
made available to everybody.   In the words of A.J. Liebling

      "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one."

This is the age of information, so enabling grass-roots collaboration
and publishing is the best way I can think of so far to help fulfill
the Internet's potential for enabling people to share their thoughts,
and leverage each other's skills.

Your comments and suggestions are most helpful.
Please keep them coming!

   Cheers,
   -Jon

dozyarmadillo

Hi thanks for explaining Alfresco's approach to WCM. I look forward to more comprehensive documentation.

Regards