Thanks Wouter,
Your mail explains from a web developers point of view how I see MMBase.
My focus is at the moment at installation, maintenance, security and
performance on a conceptual level. How should we functional change
mmbase to get these areas better. To put an idea in code has never been
a problem. The problem is to let everyone have the same idea. Hope my
document will accomplish this.
Nico
Wouter Westendorp wrote:
Hello Nico and other developers,
I've been following MMBase mailinglist and meetings for a few years
now. During these years, I've seen many discussions about 'what is
mmbase' :) I am a web developer in some way that I know PHP, SQL some
Java and so on, but what is intresting me the most is the world of
Content Management. I've been playing with several CMS systems like
EZPublish, Mambo and Drupal, but MMBase is somehow my favorite.
In my opinion, MMBase is in first case like a database abstraction
layer. In the end, we all need some kind of data storage for our news,
stories, projects and so on every time. Technically speaking, it is a
Java layer we work on, while the RDBMS keeps our data safe and
searchable. We don't have to speak SQL thanks to our editors, and we
can choose any kind of DBMS manufacturer we want. Free choice, that's
always nice.
The best thing of MMBase however, is in my opinion the possibility to
create our own object model. Every implementation has its own
requirements to maintain data. What data needs to be stored, how we
name it and how it interacts is a domain specific question. It is this
part of MMBase which makes it very flexible and thereby a tool to use
in many implementations.
Take with that all the extra stuff like image and upload handling and
all other technical advantages we can use and we have a lot of out
ingredients for a complete CMS. Ready for tweaking of course. :)
However, due to some things, it is in my opinion not a CMS, but as you
name it a 'data repository'. That MMBase is not an Out of the Box CMS,
is a result of its 'open domain model' which we have to implement our
selves of course. As this is one of the MMBase selling points, this
should be a tradeoff we cannot omit.
But as a webdeveloper who want his site to be ready yesterday, I am
still missing some features which distinguish it from other cms's
available:
First of all is a more sophisticted security mechnism. Today's multi
user webapplications demand some kind of role based security system,
where we can define who is allowed to access or perform changes on
what kind of data. MMBase currently lacks objecttype level or
fieldtype level authorization.
Internationalization. I am writing web sites, so they are available
world wide. So my content should be localized! I know there is a lot
possible, but a generic way to translate or localize content is up to
our imagination.
Workflow, what's that? :) I know, better skip this one.
Performance. Reading data is most of the time very fast due to caches
and so on, but updates suck. Updates need to travel a long way trough
all bridges and caches, so its not a surprise that this takes some
time. However, for applications with a lot of updates, it is a weak
point were our end user has to live with! Okay, we need a phat server
for MMBase, true. Your proposal for snapshots may change this probably?
Installation and maintenance is also quite diverse. One needs in depth
knowledge of MMBase internals to get it running the way we want.
Thanks to that, many of us have a full time job, but as a novice user,
I just want to hit 'I Agree, Next, Next, Finish' :)
Well, so far my complaints right now. I agree I should take a crash
course Java programming and start developing MMBase 2.0 right now, but
study duties prevent me from that.
Till this time, I'll use MMBase as a meta-data framework editor over
my content repository database system :)
Greetz,
Wouter
Nico Klasens wrote:
Hello Developers,
Just before I went on vacation, a month ago, I wrote a document with
my thoughts on MMBase. I just added some additional stuff to it. I
like to start a discussion how to restructure and improve the MMBase
system to get ready for the next stage. We don't have to implement
things right away, but it could be a goal in the far future where we
all can work towards.
Regards,
Nico
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