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

17. June 2012

FlexibleDashboard now has Mobile AIR support for iOS/iPads and Android Tablets

FlexibleDashboard, an open source dashboard project for BI dashboards/mashups, etc., now has a Flex Mobile AIR version in addition to Desktop (Desktop AIR and Flex in browser) versions. An Android build is available for download, and the iOS version can be built from the common source.

FlexibleDashboard used the esria dashboard as a starting point and evolved it with added flexmdi cascade/tile (esria pod drag/drop in tile mode), more pods, both Flex in Browser and Flex+AIR versions, port from Flex 3 to Flex 4,  and pods in separate Flex modules. Example pods using Spring ActionScript to have different configs for individual pods and config of a simple IDataService with either SOAP, XML, or RemoteObject BlazeDS datasources (see GridPod and ChartGridPod) were also added.

FlexibleDashboard has the following pods: esria charting pods with quietly scheming animation (line, bar, pie charts),  JasperReports viewer, BIRT Report viewer, OLAP pivotable grid with XMLA datasource support and MDX query editor (from Grebulon sourceforge project), Pentaho Charts sample, a simple BlazeDS data pod, Flex SWF pod, Calendar, HTML viewing (IFrame, AIR HTML, mobile StageWebView versions),  and some AIR only (Desktop and Mobile) pods (HTML browser, Google gadgets, Liferay portlet widget, and Local Files browser).

For mobile, only the bare minimum was done: pod min/max/close button hit areas was increased and mobile versions of pods displaying HTML were created (the snapshot feature of the flexcapacitor WebView Flex UIComponent StageWebView wrapper helped to support cascading mode html pods with only the topmost being in StageWebVeiw mode and the other being in bitmap snapshot mode.) Other pods were unchanged and don’t have mobile specific UI (but stuff still works, even  mx chart drill down with touch).  Also, the original app projects were split into separate app / library / modules projects to facilitate sharing with the new mobile app / library projects.

It took an error message on iOS about not being able to load module SWF (Duh!) to get me to change the mobile project to link pod code instead of loading modules. Android Mobile AIR was able to load modules, but mobile Flex app projects in Flash Builder doesn’t have module setup and won’t build the app using framework RSL even though its in the UI. So I ended up just having a single mobile app project for both iOS and Android that doesn’t use modules (desktop AIR and in-browser Flex app projects still use modules).

Plan in the future to have some sort of HTML5/JS Dashboard project like FlexibleDashboard   (with web app and PhoneGap mobile app variations).  Also plan to add support for semantic data sources / semantic data integration, and more visualization support.

Steve Reiner

Integrated Semantics

@stevereiner on Twitter

5. June 2012

OpenCalais Integration updated for Alfresco 4.0 and added use of new Share config mechanism. Apache Stanbol Plans

The OpenCalais Integration for Alfresco was finally updated for Alfresco 4.0 . Given the shift away from the Alfresco Forge to the Alfresco Add+Ons catalog site, the new home for the OpenCalais integration is now on a  Google Code site pointed to by its add+ons page

For Alfresco 4.0 with Solr enabled, an issue was fixed. (Some code that needed to get to newly added top level semantic tag categories right away needed to change to use a CategoryService API instead of using a search query since there is added delay in indexing. Changing the alfresco.cron  value  in solrcore.properties from 15 secs to 150 secs helped to get something that was intermittent to be reproducible every time.)

The Share Integration (semantic tag cloud dashlet, semantic geo-tagged map dashlet, auto-tag action menu in doc libraries and repository) was updated to use the new doclib action config mechanism added in 4.0 . Its much nicer to put an added action menu in a web-extension/share-config-custom.xml file than to setup the  modified versions of actions-common.get.head.ftl , documentlist.get.config.xml, etc in web-extension.  (Helpful ECM Stuff blog post on Share action config in Alfresco 4.0)

To use the free OpenCalais service, you need to get an API key from  opencalais.com  This allows you to submit 50,000 documents a day. More requests are supported in the non free version called Calais vs. the free (but not open source) service called OpenCalais. Note that document size per submission is to 100k bytes in all versions, the service retains extracted metadata (doesn’t retain content). So its geared more for news articles than large sensitive documents.  Calais has a test page to try out giving it text and seeing what it extracts.

To use the Share auto-tag action menu  (used to do a one time auto-tag on a document) you need a Calais api key setup in module\calais\module-context.xml  (see readme.txt).  Semantic tags will be listed in the properties section of a Share document details page  (not with regular tag UI since a different category content model / custom root category is used for semantic tags). You can also add one or more semantic tag clouds dashlets and a semantic geo-tagged map dashlet to share dashboards (site and/or global) to navigate from semantic tags to documents.   In explorer, doing a one time auto-tag you need to used the run a rule on a doc action and give the Calais key each time in the dialog.   A  rule to auto-tag documents in a folder can be setup in Explorer or Share (using the “Auto-tag with Calais” action, and you need to give the Calais api key as a parameter to this).

FlexSpaces has support for the OpenCalais integration in all its versions (desktop AIR client, Flex in-browser, Mobile AIR).  Like Share it supports semantic tag clouds, a semantic geo-tagged map, and one time auto-tagging like Share. It has additional OpenCalais features: semantic tag suggestion, adding / removing semantic tags on a document.  You can setup a Calais api key (and Alfresco server info) in FlexSpaces preferences dialog that was added in the 2012.02.08 version and avoid having to do this in FlexSpacesConfig.xml . Info entered is sticky and per user on their local machine (stored in a Local Shared Object). So theoretically each user could submit 50,000 documents a day to OpenCalais if they each signed up for a key.  FlexibleShare includes FlexSpaces and its semantic features, but hasn’t been updated with the preferences dialog or other recent FlexSpaces changes yet (update: FlexibleShare 6/28/2012 version now has the preferences dialog and Alfresco 4.0 support too).

FlexSpaces Preferences Dialog

Plan to have an Alfresco integration with Apache Stanbol on the same Semantics4Alfresco Google Code  site with the OpenCalais integration.  Apache Stanbol (derived from the IKS project) is fully open source, is a general stack of frameworks for semantic content management and can do more than content enhancement,  can get around the drawbacks of OpenCalais, and gives you more flexibility to setup customized ontologies vs. the fixed support Calias has. Stanbol can also call other enhancement engines instead of the default OpenNLP or even chain them together. Stanbol has an adapter for OpenCalais. For enhancing news, OpenCalais works better out of the box than OpenNLP.   Zaizi has already done Stanbol integration work, although only a version for an old IKS version is currently open source.  Integrated Semantics will leverage  / extend any newer Stanbol integration that Zaizi makes available open source.  A Stanbol integration could extend Solr facets with semantic facets.

20. May 2012

First Test Version and Source of CMIS Spaces Mobile Available

Filed under: Alfresco,Android,CMIS,CMIS Spaces,FlexSpaces,iOS,iPad,iPhone,Tablets — admin @ 20:30

CMIS Spaces is a Flex based RIA Client for CMIS content mgt repositories with Desktop (AIR App, Flex In Browser) and Mobile (Android Mobile AIR App, iOS Mobile AIR App) versions.

The source and first test version of CMIS Spaces Mobile is finally available on the CMIS Spaces Google Code site. Its geared more for Android tablets / iPads than smart phones.

A first test build of CMIS Spaces Mobile for Android is available for download. The iOS version can be built from the common source using Flash Builder 4.6 / Flex 4.6 .

A newer version of FlexSpaces Mobile for Alfresco and newer source is also available on the FlexSpaces Google Code site. CMIS Spaces and FlexSpaces share a good bit code between them. FlexSpaces has support for more features (workflow, etc.) and uses custom web scripts instead of CMIS binding APIs.

A third test build of FlexSpaces Mobile for Android is available for download. FlexSpaces Mobile for iOS can be built from the common FlexSpaces source.

Alfresco Add+Ons Catalog pages:
CMIS Spaces
Flex Spaces

19. April 2012

New CMIS Spaces 2012.04.19 version

Filed under: CMIS,CMIS Spaces — admin @ 18:15

cmis-spaces-20120419-3.png

A new version of CMIS Spaces is now available on google code:

1. Now can set the cmis atompub url for your repository from a preferences dialog without changing the config file. The preferences dialog  is accessed by clicking on the “Preferences” button on the login page.

2. Has fixes for Alfresco 4.x opencmis atompub binding. Tested on Alfresco 4.0d (Alfresco 3.x atompub binding, 4.x opencmis atompub binding,  and soap binding),  IBM FileNet, Nuxeo 5.5,  and Adobe CRX). Still need to test on Microsoft SharePoint and EMC Documentum.

3. Now uses the video player instead of video display control (so has more controls and fullscreen option). A  “Play Video” menu was added to the File menu.

4. The code has been been split up into libraries (atompub, soap, main cmis spaces lib, etc.) and an app project. Further work is needed on the libraries, maybe could make more like Apache Chemistry OpenCMIS client APIs.

5. AIR and  “in browser” versions are available  A CMIS Spaces Mobile version (like FlexSpace Moble) is coming soon.

12. December 2011

First test version of FlexSpaces Mobile for Android available

Filed under: Alfresco,Android,FlexSpaces,iOS,iPad,iPhone,Tablets — admin @ 19:45

The first test version of FlexSpaces Mobile for Android (and Alfresco ECM) is now available for download on the FlexSpaces google code site. A more final version will be available on the Android Market for free. The first test version for iOS will use the “ad-hoc” testing Apple allows until an app is in the app store. For people interested in testing the iOS version (mainly for iPads, will fit on iPhone4 screens), send email to info  at  integratedsemantics.com.   Test versions of CMIS Spaces Mobile for Android and iOS will be available soon too.

flexspacesmobile2.png

Notes:

  • Need to have flexspaces webscripts installed in your Alfresco server
  • Use settings / preferences on the initial login page to enter server domain/protocol/port.
  • Geared for Android tablets, will also fit on high-res smart phones at least 480 pixels wide
  • Geared more for landscape mode when have the navigation tree displayed (turn off in the view menu)
  • App size is larger due to including captive air run-time so you don’t need to install the latest air separately
  • Some features were left out for now (open calais semantic tagging, favorites section, local files panel, wcm)
  • The FlexSpaces mobile project source is not checked into google code yet
  • FlexSpaces in general still needs its start workflow feature fixed for Alfresco 4.0
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