ECM, BI, and AI / Semantic Tech Open Source, HTML5/JS, Angular, Alfresco, CMIS, BI, Visualization, AI, Semantic Search, SPARQL/RDF/OWL

15. November 2008

Adobe Code Name Genesis / Flex Portals / Open Source

Genesis Presentation

Adobe is going to give more details about Genesis, their enterprise / collaborative / mashup AIR client next week at Adobe MAX. This client is supposed to be a free download with for pay SAAS collaborative services, and have an app catalog.

Although I assume it won’t be open source, I am curious how open and flexible it will be. Can it be used as a general flex based portal container? Can you customize the container or only just plug in Tiles? What apis will it have? Could you use it without their services and tie in your own SSO ?

I could  do the portlets for the FlexibleShare project I have started on as Genesis Tiles  (for Alfresco ECM, Alfresco Share collaboration, open source BI/reporting, etc).  Maybe also have an open source Flex portal container supporting the Adobe Genesis Tile api  (and support both Flex+AIR and Flex+Browser containers. Note: html embedded in Flex works best in AIR).

I have been prototyping using the Esria dashboard sample as a Flex based container with FlexSpaces components in pods (Alfresco DocLib, Search, Tasks, WCM). It works in AIR including drag/drop of desktop files into FlexSpaces pods. The DocLib and Search pods also support Adobe LiveCycle Content Services ES. The Alfresco Share UI works in this prototype currently in an HTML pod. I will be starting Flex versions of the Alfresco Share collaboration components (wiki, blog, calendar, discussions). Also have a JasperReports viewer pod based on a modified version of the flex based JasperReports flash viewer.  There is also a Flex based Pentaho dashboard sample available.  BIRT reports could be viewed as html or pdf, or with the Actuate interactive viewer.

The open source Anvil project (Flex MDI portal / Java backend framework) could be leveraged.  Also found an interesting article about Flex based portals: “A new way to look at Portals“.

Some Genesis links
Blog: Code Name Genesis – The Future of the Enterprise Desktop
Demo of an early Genesis prototype
The Future of the Enterprise Desktop: The Elevator Pitch
Office 2.0 Conference: Adobe Genesis Unveiling
Teblog: Adobe Genesis addresses real needs
Adobe readying new mashup tool for business users | ITworld

Update: Newer Genesis Links
Genesis page on Adobe Labs
Genesis Overview Slides on SlideShare from Adobe MAX 2008
update 1/12/09: Genesis presentation at Adobe MAX 2008 on Adobe TV

11. November 2008

FlexibleShare

Something new is on the way: FlexibleShare

Flex based version of Alfresco Share / Flex based Portal Container  (Open Source)

1. Dashboard dashlet/portlet drag /drop in Flex
2. Portlets in Flex and HTML/Ajax
3. Leverages FlexSpaces components
4. Leverages Alfresco Share (site model, rest apis, surf, dashlets),
5. Additonal Flex components for wikis, blogs, discussions, calendar
6. Leverage Liferay, (supports jsr-168, wsrp) in a later stage
7. Reporting/BI (JasperReports, Pentaho, BIRT)
8. BPM (JBoss jBPM in Alfresco)
9. Desktop drag/drop of files with AIR

Registered a google code project  http://code.google.com/p/flexibleshare/ and an Alfresco forge project http://forge.alfresco.com/projects/flexibleshare/

Note on the name: Alfresco Share and Surf are already “flexible” (in the able to adapt to new situations sense). Also you can implement Share/Surf components/dashlets with Flex  (as I did with the FlexSpaces page site components).  The difference with FlexibleShare is that the container itself is in Flex and the primary way for implementing dashlet/portlet UI is Flex (and Flex+AIR). Surf dashlets and Liferay portlets in HTML/Ajax are still supported.

Also used “Flexible” to sound like the book Flexible Rails (Flex+Ruby on Rails).  With FlexibleShare although the server scripting would tend to be the usual web scripts in JavaScript, also  supporting Groovy/Grails would be interesting and fit in with the Java and Spring use in Alfresco.  The Alfresco forge has a Groovy integration (although it needs some updating for Alfresco 3.0).

Other things: the use of a web-tier Flex compiler (like the Flex plugin for Grails does) could be used to allow Flex forms/UI to be added (and compiled automatically) without having to use a development tool. BlazeDS support like in this plugin would also be nice too for higher performance data transfer.

Update: See description of  FlexibleShare prototyping mentioned in my Genesis / Flex Portals / Open Source blog post.

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