Alfresco 2.1 Released with REST and Mashup Support

Alfresco is pleased to announce the availability of the Community Version 2.1 of its Open Source Enterprise Content Management System. This version provides REST-style interfaces called Web Scripts to simplify access of enterprise content services from web sites, portals and applications. Using these new interfaces, the Alfresco system now provides access to its repository services from within Microsoft Office. In addition, web site mashups and JSR-168 portlets are easier to construct and access content and workflow information using scripting languages like JavaScript, FreeMarker or PHP. Alfresco Version 2.1 is available for download from http://dev.alfresco.com/downloads.

Version 2.1 provides a Web Script framework for constructing REST-style interfaces to simplify mashups and provide several out of the box user interfaces for previewing and viewing content, viewing query results and processing workflows. The Web Script dispatcher maps URIs to resources such as user interface components and data-oriented resources in the Alfresco repository, such as content, content metadata, workflows or people registered with the repository. Web Scripts support access and update using standard HTTP methods and can be constructed using light-weight scripting languages including JavaScript or PHP. The Alfresco server includes a built-in server-side JavaScript debugger to enable line by line step through, variable inspection and arbitrary script execution.

JSR-168 Portlet construction and integration is now much easier with Web Scripts with pre-built components providing some of the most common features required in portals, such as document browsing, mapping of web content, tracking of workflow and tasks, and tracking of web content forms, tasks and assets. These new components use a much easier AJAX-based user interface that simplify browsing, hide more complex information and provide detachable previews and summaries. Out of the box integrations with Liferay 4.3 and JBoss Portal 2.6 will be available soon. Creating new portlets can be done using simple scripting using FreeMarker or JavaScript.

A new Microsoft Word integration built using the Web Script technology, provides a simple, light-weight browser control that display Web Script components based upon the context of the document being edited. The plugin provides a Office-tailored set of components including a document dashboard for personal context, current tasks and actions available on the document, a repository browser, document detail view, task and workflow information and search pane providing federated search available using the OpenSearch API.

In addition, version 2.1 provides extensions to web content management and workflow to simplify the management of websites. Alfresco web content management now supports transactionally-complete deployment of content to one or more web servers. Either all the updates happen or they don’t. Preventative locking of web assets is now supported as is native search of the web site based upon the Lucene full-text engine. The Alfresco workflow, built using JBoss jBPM, now provides task commenting, viewing history of completed tasks, and timers to support expired tasks or timed release of content to a website. Extensions to manage translations and multi-lingual documents were contributed by the community.