Re: Re: blug-general Digest, Vol 20, Issue 10

I occasionally lurk and just happened to catch this one...very interesting
question and I am wondering about it myself...

< segue into boring subject:begin >

You might want to skip this section...

What I have been doing for the last 8 or 9 years is Document Management,
which may or may not be the same as Content Management - depends on who
you ask, and the issue of what it is and what it should do is ongoing in
the industry.

On one hand, there is the point of KM, for which you might want something
that is comparable to a database/XML/XST solution as knowledge is a
function of context and data. Data, such as a number, has limited meaning.
Put in the context of, say, a temperature, it becomes info. And put in the
context of location, time, etc. and maybe history, and you get knowledge
or maybe just a probability stat on how hot it is going to get in Beijing
today. Knowledge is fuzzy stuff and one of the reasons KM has such a bad
rep is that it can't seem to actually define what it is...

On the other hand, there is the point of managing documents as complete
entities as a regulated history of what has been documented (pardon any
puns here). Regulatory agencies really like that idea, the US FDA and the
Pharma companies where I usually work are obsessively anal about things
like chains of control and versioning. In this scenario, in addition to
just the storing of docs you need to have elegant versioning systems,
elegant grouping systems, workflow, electronic signatures, archiving, and
very high levels of control and security. Even a transform from a Word doc
to a pdf has risk that has to recognised and mitigated as much as
possible.

In the background of all this are things like distrubution, scalability,
business continuity, system validation, taxonomy (if you can ever get
people to commit), keywords/subjects/FTI(full text indexing), controlled
text (probably the same as vocabulary) and all the other buzzwords that IT
Architects who specialize in this stuff like to use to intimidate  and
impress :)) As I am one of them, I know some stuff but not all - no where
near all - the complexity that the systems can require and/or achieve.

So, the question that everyone usually needs to figure out is what are the
system reqs, what are the user reqs (Use Cases really are useful for
this), how much/many resources you have to work on it, and where do you
figure to be in X many years (because migration from one system to another
is a pain that should be visited on your enemies and not anyone you like).
This is all the stuff that IT people learn to deal with everyday, I think,
so it is nothing new...just boring...

< boring subject:end >

In addition to the systems previously mentioned, a friend of mine (another
IT Architect that likes to code) has been working on a ZOPE/XFS solution
(DoXFS on sourceforge) that needs polish but has huge scalability (he
recently tested it with a billion docs and I think that it can handle
files up to a terrabyte or two big). It has a Web (PHP) frontend and uses
the journaling ability of XFS to keep the (indexed) metadata in the
journal. Very scalable and very robust (there is no database, only a
journaled filesystem) and pretty fast and very feature poor compared to
some other systems. I was working on this project for awhile and it has
legs although you might want to do some customization if you wanted to use
it.

Anyway, sorry about the length, but maybe it will help someone. If anyone
has any questions (or recriminations on the length...), just drop me an
email. I am in Germany now so it may take a day or two to respond...

Craig



> drupal is great for small quick solutions.
> if you wanna go deep it has to be typo3.
>
> regards
> marius
>
>
> On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 14:33:03 +0800
> young  <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> As far as I know, drupal is much more easier because it's LAMP.
>>
>> 在
>> 05-9-26，blug-general-request-+qp3TudyjKPvfBIPTTProkB+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org<blug-general-request-+qp3TudyjKPvfBIPTTProkB+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org>
>> 写道：
>> > 想在 blug-general 列表发言 , 请 email 给
>> >
>> >         [email protected]
>> >
>> > 经由 WWW 订阅或取消订阅 , 请到
>> >
>> >         http://list.beijinglug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/blug-general
>> >
>> > 或通过 email , é€å‡ºä¸€å°æ ‡é¢˜æˆ–å†…æ–‡ä¸º 'help' 到
>> >
>> >         blug-general-request-+qp3TudyjKPvfBIPTTProkB+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org
>> >
>> > 想与列表管理员取得联系时 , 请 email 给
>> >
>> >         blug-general-owner-+qp3TudyjKPvfBIPTTProkB+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org
>> >
>> > 当回信时 , è¯·ç»™ä¸€ä¸ªé€‚å½“çš„æ ‡é¢˜ , è¿™æ ·ä¼šæ¯”
>> >  "Re: Contents of blug-general digest..."更清楚明白.
>> >
>> >
>> > Today's Topics:
>> >
>> >    1. Drupal, WebGUI, Plone, BLOG, RSS, et al.... (Richard Ford)
>> >    2. Re: Drupal, WebGUI, Plone, BLOG, RSS, et al....
>> >       (nEO  (a.k.a. gentoo.cn))
>> >
>> >
>> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> > Message: 1
>> > Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 10:21:48 +0800
>> > From: Richard Ford <[email protected]>
>> > Subject: [blug-general] Drupal, WebGUI, Plone, BLOG, RSS, et al....
>> > To: [email protected]
>> > Message-ID: <1127701309.4483.5.camel@peach>
>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>> >
>> > Is there a comparison to be made between plone and drupal?  Or WebGUI?
>> >
>> > When is something a real CMS (Vocabulary, Taxonomy, FOAF, Meta
>> > Structures) and when is it a fancy blog, HTML content management
>> system?
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> > RF.
>> >
>> > -------------- next part --------------
>> > An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
>> > URL:
>> http://lists.exoweb.net/pipermail/blug-general/attachments/20050926/4e63683d/attachment.html
>> >
>> > ------------------------------
>> >
>> > Message: 2
>> > Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 10:28:22 +0800
>> > From: "nEO  (a.k.a. gentoo.cn)" <[email protected]>
>> > Subject: Re: [blug-general] Drupal, WebGUI, Plone, BLOG, RSS, et
>> >         al....
>> > To: [email protected],        Beijing LUG general non-technical
>> discussion
>> >         list - Not publicly posted
>> <[email protected]>
>> > Message-ID: <9a38924605092519282dd4d0b2-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org>
>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>> >
>> > 2005/9/26, Richard Ford <[email protected]>:
>> > >  Is there a comparison to be made between plone and drupal?  Or
>> WebGUI?
>> > >
>> > Yes,
>> > http://www.cmsmatrix.org/
>> > http://www.oscom.org/matrix/index.html;jsessionid=68751B2F1BBEF476EA7914CE99A2DC2A
>> >
>> > >  When is something a real CMS (Vocabulary, Taxonomy, FOAF, Meta
>> Structures)
>> > > and when is it a fancy blog, HTML content management system?
>> > Plone is real CMS
>> >
>> > --
>> > I'm the one, powered by nEO
>> >
>> >
>> > ------------------------------
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > blug-general mailing list
>> > [email protected]
>> > http://list.beijinglug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/blug-general
>> >
>> >
>> > End of blug-general Digest, Vol 20, Issue 10
>> > ********************************************
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> the world is not enough...
> _______________________________________________
> blug-general list
> [email protected]
> http://list.beijinglug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/blug-general
>


_______________________________________________
blug-general list
[email protected]
http://list.beijinglug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/blug-general