Alfresco Developer Guide

Alfresco has some of the worst documentation that I have ever seen. This book is only slightly better. No matter what I try and do I have to go to the community to get the real, workable information. I just seem to hit what should be the simple stuff that is not documented anywhere.

While Alfresco by Munwar Shariff got you started with Alfresco, Alfresco Developer Guide by Jeff Potts gets you going. The first book provides good overview of the breadth of features and Alfresco Developer Guide dives deep into customization for Alfresco-based solutions. Content management is a general requirement but its applications vary significantly. Without accommodating the specific needs of the business, a content management system (CMS) would usually be little more than a glorified file system.As I started reading the book, it quickly became evident that the author had significant hands-on experience with customizing Alfresco. The book has detailed examples with code and screenshots. The step-by-step directions with practical advice and recommendations make it easy to follow. The book uses Alfresco 2.2 Enterprise and 3.0 Labs versions. In one sentence, I would characterize this book as an illustrated handbook for customizing Alfresco.The book starts with a description of the Alfresco Platform. This includes overview of content management, the architecture of Alfresco-based solutions, the example used throughout the book, and various kinds of customizations that can be done with Alfresco. It is followed by directions for setting up an Alfresco development environment using Eclipse. Detailed discussion of customization starts with creating custom models - which includes types, associations, and aspects. The UI changes and programmatic access to go with custom content model are also discussed. Automated processing of content with actions, behaviors, transformers, and extractors is discussed next. Web client customization discusses how to adapt the UI for specific needs. The book also discusses implementation of RESTful API using Web Scripts. Workflows are an important feature of content management systems. The book discusses implementation of advanced workflows using jBPM. jBPM enables you to implement complex workflows within Alfresco platform. Web Content management is a popular and common application of content management systems. The book discusses web content management on Alfresco using Alfresco WCM. The book concludes with a discussion on security, including incorporating Alfresco in a Single-Sign-On solution. The appendix includes API reference and examples.Given my experience with EMC Documentum, I couldn't help but compare the details with how I do things with Documentum. This book provided the depth to make such a comparison possible. One would normally use this book as a reference to jump to the task at hand and follow a step-by-step example. If you need to understand the breadth, you can skip over example details and read it in a flow. However, in my opinion, the best value provided by this book is in terms of best practices and practical advice which is hard to find in product documentation.The author does not skimp on sharing practical advice. A fundamental advice is around separation of solution files from Alfresco files. The author also discusses various options for packaging and deployment of customizations. The troubleshooting tools and practices discussed would benefit any Alfresco developer. Modeling best practices are also very important since the custom content model is usually the foundation of a custom solution on Alfresco. When creating a solution for a large organization, advice about handling large directories for user/group synchronization would be handy. Other tips such as dealing with cross-domain scripting limitation and implementing Single-Sign-On also add value.I think that it is a great book for people who are already working with Alfresco or another content management system. Readers new to the content management space may need a gentler introduction to the concepts and to Alfresco before they can derive maximum value out of this book.ConclusionEven if you had the expertise to write this book, you might want to keep a copy handy if you frequently implement solutions using Alfresco. If you are new to Alfresco this book is even more valuable. If you are new to content management in general then you may want to ramp up with some other resources before making the best use of this book.

"Alfresco Developer Guide", by Jeff Potts, is the second title about Alfresco recently published by Packt Publishing, after  Alfresco Enterprise Content Management Implementation , by Munwar Shariff, that was published almost two years ago.For those who don't know, Alfresco is the leading Open Source Enterprise Content Management system and is rapidly gaining acceptance in many enterprises, thanks to its rich feature set and ease of implementation.Given the brisk pace of development of the product over the recent months, a new volume on Alfresco was eagerly awaited by many. This one mostly covers Alfresco 2.2, with some mentions about the new features introduced in version 3.0, whose official release happened shortly after the book was published. So it hit the shelves with a bit of unfortunate timing, but luckily none of the content of the book is to be considered obsolete, as all the APIs that used to work with 2.2 still work with 3.0. Still, a bit more coverage of 3.0 would have been great, but we can hope that maybe more will be added in a second edition.Speaking of the content that is in this edition, readers will be able to find in-depth coverage of almost all aspects of the Alfresco platform, from a developer point of view. The target audience of the book is indeed developers who want to customize and extend Alfresco, and create new applications on top of it. Good overviews of content modeling, Web Client (Alfresco's own web-based management console) customizations, behaviors, transformers and extractors, Web Scripts, advanced workflows, and security are provided, with plenty of detailed examples of configurations and API usage.A long chapter is dedicated to the Web Content Management (WCM) add-on product and the book closes with appendixes containing a concise reference of APIs and configuration properties. Thankfully, the author and the publisher did not opt for including a complete reprint of the APIs in order to beef up the page count. Instead, a list of the main Java classes and Javascript root objects is provided, but developers will have to refer to the online documentation for a complete reference.A section of this reference that many readers will find to be extremely useful is a detailed description of the Lucene search syntax. On the other hand, page 271 talks about a Surf API reference to be found in the appendix, but there isn't one there. Surf is the new web application framework included in version 3, so they probably couldn't find the time to provide some documentation for it in time for publishing. As I wrote above, this is understandable, given the timing, but let's hope the second edition amends these shortcomings.My overall judgment of the book is definitely positive, anyway. The author does an excellent job of maintaining a good balance between breadth and depth, and the narrative of each chapter manages to capture well the attention of the reader, guiding him from simple concepts to more complex scenarios in a very natural progression. Readers are expected to have a good working knowledge of Java, XML, and Java web application development. Some basic knowledge of Javascript will be useful too.If I have a specific complaint about the content is that the index is too thin and many concepts are not referenced there. This is a defect that does not compromise the overall usefulness of the book, however.The author, Jeff Potts, is an accomplished ECM consultant and long-time Alfresco expert. You can read more from him at his website [...]

No lapses from Amazon, but the book did not mention the product version.I bought it assuming that it would be the latest but it turned out to be a lot older than that.Disappointed that older version technical books are still sold without any explicit information written to describe the version