Re: [xwiki-users] Wiki suitability by ACL, security, and support

2009-08-13 Thread Sergiu Dumitriu
Trevor wrote:
> Hi Guillaume,
> 
> Thanks for your detailed reply, I appreciate it.
> 
> On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:59:15 +0200 Guillaume Lerouge  
> wrote:
> 
>> Brand new WYSIWYG editor.
>> We've got a great new skin / user interface on the way that's even better
>> than the current one.
> 
> Are you referring to v2.0 compared to v1.9?  
> 
> One of our primary criteria is a well-rounded, solid WYSIWYG editor (for 
> non-technical users), and I'm currently basing my judgement on v2.0 milestone 
> 2.  Is v2.0 running "well enough" to use on a lightly-used production server? 
>  Any timeline on when it will be released officially?
> 
>> effects). A way to prevent this is to use XWiki Enterprise Manager, to open
>> one wiki per client (clients having local accounts on those wikis) while
>> your developers will be global users with access to all subwikis. That would
>> fit neatly with your use case I believe.
> 
> Yes, I think that sounds like it would do what we need.  Is XEM released for 
> v2.0 yet?  Or would we have to run 1.9?
> 
> Another question, regarding the choice of database:  the download page says 
> "Once you're more familiar with XWiki you might want to set it up on your own 
> database or in your own container,..."  Does this mean Jetty and/or HSQL are 
> not robust enough for a production wiki instance?  When it says "Standalone 
> installation including a Jetty container and an HSQLDB database all set up." 
> it seems to imply that this is *just* for first-time, inexperienced users, 
> and maybe not for a live production system.

Jetty is good enough as a container for production use. Even Google 
recently switched from Tomcat to Jetty for its hosted apps. HSQLDB, on 
the other hand, is not suited for big wikis, since it keeps all the data 
in memory.

> Ah, I see "Currently XEM only fully supports MySQL and Oracle RDBMS."
> 
> Thanks again for your candid answers.  
> 
> If any users on the mailing list have trials or tribulations with these 
> servlets and/or databases, any comments would be welcome.



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Re: [xwiki-users] Wiki suitability by ACL, security, and support

2009-08-12 Thread [Ricardo Rodriguez] Your EPEC Network ICT Team
Hi, Trevor,

Trevor wrote:
> Are you running with Jetty?  I've seen reference in the mailing list about 
> setting up a SecurityManager policy; do you use one?
>   

Nope, we are running, and have always done that, on Tomcat. Why? Because 
years ago Tomcat already was easy to install in at least the four 
software platforms we are running here (Mac OS X, Novell Netware, Suse 
Linux and Windows) and Tomcat was the servlet container chosen by 
Novell, we have successfully used it for a number of applications and 
has a nice support/development community. The reason to choose Tomcat 
had nothing to do with XWiki.

And no, we have not used Tomcat Security Manager yet.  I am afraid I can 
not be of much help with this issue!

Greetings,

Ricardo

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Your EPEC Network ICT Team

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Re: [xwiki-users] Wiki suitability by ACL, security, and support

2009-08-12 Thread Trevor
Ricardo, thanks for your input.  It's always valuable to hear from other users, 
no matter how small the group (our's is small as well).
I hadn't put the original list of criteria in any particular order, but 
"support" probably was our first or second concern.

Are you running with Jetty?  I've seen reference in the mailing list about 
setting up a SecurityManager policy; do you use one?

Guillaume, thanks for the information on the release versions.  Hearing that 
the WYSIWYG improvements have been backported to the stable release carries 
much weight for us since it's so key.  We will be proceeding with a full test 
of XEM and look forward to putting it into production if all goes well.

Trevor

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Re: [xwiki-users] Wiki suitability by ACL, security, and support

2009-08-12 Thread Guillaume Lerouge
Hi,

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 7:37 AM, Trevor  wrote:

> Hi Guillaume,
>
> Thanks for your detailed reply, I appreciate it.
>
> On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:59:15 +0200 Guillaume Lerouge 
> wrote:
>
> > Brand new WYSIWYG editor.
> > We've got a great new skin / user interface on the way that's even better
> > than the current one.
>
> Are you referring to v2.0 compared to v1.9?


The new WYSIWYG editor has been available since XWiki Enterprise 1.8 (1.8.4
was out in May), the new skin will hopefully be available from XWiki
Enterprise 2.0 onwards (next September).


> One of our primary criteria is a well-rounded, solid WYSIWYG editor (for
> non-technical users), and I'm currently basing my judgement on v2.0
> milestone 2.  Is v2.0 running "well enough" to use on a lightly-used
> production server?  Any timeline on when it will be released officially?


You can use XWiki Enterprise 1.9.2 for production purposes. Improvements to
the WYSIWYG editor in 2.0M2 have been backported to XE 1.9.2 so it's
basically the same in both versions. We find the new editor pretty solid,
specially given its relative youth, and it's only going to improve in the
future (performance improvements + support for additional browsers).

> effects). A way to prevent this is to use XWiki Enterprise Manager, to
> open
> > one wiki per client (clients having local accounts on those wikis) while
> > your developers will be global users with access to all subwikis. That
> would
> > fit neatly with your use case I believe.
>
> Yes, I think that sounds like it would do what we need.  Is XEM released
> for v2.0 yet?  Or would we have to run 1.9?


XEM 2.0 based on XE 2.0 won't be released before September. Until then you
can use XEM 1.7.2 based on XE 1.9.2 .

Another question, regarding the choice of database:  the download page says
> "Once you're more familiar with XWiki you might want to set it up on your
> own database or in your own container,..."  Does this mean Jetty and/or HSQL
> are not robust enough for a production wiki instance?  When it says
> "Standalone installation including a Jetty container and an HSQLDB database
> all set up." it seems to imply that this is *just* for first-time,
> inexperienced users, and maybe not for a live production system.


Yep, that's what we mean, we strongly advise you NOT to run HSQLDB as a
production database. Using MySQL or Oracle is a much better choice for
production.

Ah, I see "Currently XEM only fully supports MySQL and Oracle RDBMS."
>
> Thanks again for your candid answers.


You're welcome :-)

Guillaume


> If any users on the mailing list have trials or tribulations with these
> servlets and/or databases, any comments would be welcome.
>
> Trevor
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>



-- 
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Product Manager - XWiki
Skype: wikibc
Twitter: glerouge
http://guillaumelerouge.com/
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Re: [xwiki-users] Wiki suitability by ACL, security, and support

2009-08-12 Thread [Ricardo Rodriguez] Your EPEC Network ICT Team
Hi Trevor,

Trevor wrote:

> If any users on the mailing list have trials or tribulations with these 
> servlets and/or databases, any comments would be welcome.
>   


Just some more candid comments :-) I think we could subscribe the whole 
five points list you have originally posted. I would exchange with each 
other points 1 and 5, being the support team/community the most 
important strength. From this team/community continuously sources great 
new ideas that are implemented in brand new features, changes in 
structure, plans for a new data model,... I thing that the devs list is 
a great example about how thinks evolve here.

Perhaps the biggest weakness is the update process. Even it is not 
difficult, it is a bit tricky and, if you are not careful enough, it is 
possible to make common mistakes as overwriting modified pages with new 
versions included in a new default xar.

Layout modification has been improved a lot. I am anxious to see the new 
skin that will be included with the brand new XWiki 2.0.

We have at the moment a small XWiki installation running in a Suse Linux 
server and with MySQL as database backend. We are planning to install 
two more servers in the following few months to get at least a new 
"productions instance" and a reasonable development environment.

We are a small group, so must be the weight of our opinion!, but XWiki 
has became centric to our collaborative infrastructure  thus of our 
whole work.

I am sure your experience will be greatly welcome in this win-win scenario!

Cheers,

Ricardo

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Your EPEC Network ICT Team

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Re: [xwiki-users] Wiki suitability by ACL, security, and support

2009-08-11 Thread Trevor
Hi Guillaume,

Thanks for your detailed reply, I appreciate it.

On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:59:15 +0200 Guillaume Lerouge  
wrote:

> Brand new WYSIWYG editor.
> We've got a great new skin / user interface on the way that's even better
> than the current one.

Are you referring to v2.0 compared to v1.9?  

One of our primary criteria is a well-rounded, solid WYSIWYG editor (for 
non-technical users), and I'm currently basing my judgement on v2.0 milestone 
2.  Is v2.0 running "well enough" to use on a lightly-used production server?  
Any timeline on when it will be released officially?

> effects). A way to prevent this is to use XWiki Enterprise Manager, to open
> one wiki per client (clients having local accounts on those wikis) while
> your developers will be global users with access to all subwikis. That would
> fit neatly with your use case I believe.

Yes, I think that sounds like it would do what we need.  Is XEM released for 
v2.0 yet?  Or would we have to run 1.9?

Another question, regarding the choice of database:  the download page says 
"Once you're more familiar with XWiki you might want to set it up on your own 
database or in your own container,..."  Does this mean Jetty and/or HSQL are 
not robust enough for a production wiki instance?  When it says "Standalone 
installation including a Jetty container and an HSQLDB database all set up." it 
seems to imply that this is *just* for first-time, inexperienced users, and 
maybe not for a live production system.

Ah, I see "Currently XEM only fully supports MySQL and Oracle RDBMS."

Thanks again for your candid answers.  

If any users on the mailing list have trials or tribulations with these 
servlets and/or databases, any comments would be welcome.

Trevor
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Re: [xwiki-users] Wiki suitability by ACL, security, and support

2009-08-11 Thread Guillaume Lerouge
Hi Trevor,

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Trevor  wrote:

> Hello. Please let me know if I'm using the wrong mailing list.
>
> I am currently evaluating XWiki (along with several other wikis) for use
> within our small development team. We will be sharing the wiki with clients
> as well, so we have several criteria that MUST be met:
>
> 1. WYSIWYG editing


Brand new WYSIWYG editor.


> 2. Clean interface, small learning curve


We've got a great new skin / user interface on the way that's even better
than the current one.


> 3. Fine-grained user access to pages


Check.


> 4. Security (the wiki will be on a server exposed to the internet, but will
> be private)


Check (I'll let someone else answer more extensively).

5. Good support base


See below.

In trying out XWiki Enterprise and looking through the documentation I think
> it meets these requirements (definitely 1-3).
>
> My questions are:
>
> 1. We will want to segregate the clients from each other (ie. they won't be
> aware of each other), but our development team would need one-login access
> to all content, across clients. ie. if a developer logs in, they would have
> access to all content; if client A logs in, they would only see client A's
> content, etc. Am I understanding correctly that with User Groups and proper
> ACL we could achieve this?


You could definitely do it. There might be one issue: if you use only one
wiki, your clients will be able to view the user profiles of one another
(unless you block access to the XWiki space, which has numerous side
effects). A way to prevent this is to use XWiki Enterprise Manager, to open
one wiki per client (clients having local accounts on those wikis) while
your developers will be global users with access to all subwikis. That would
fit neatly with your use case I believe.

2. I'm trying to get an idea of the support base behind XWiki: does the
> support and development rely on a small number of developers (or only one),
> or on a true community of developers?  I noticed the "XWiki Project Health"
> page is quite out of date (only going up to Nov/07).


Well, since the project is backed by a company (of which I'm part of) that
finances most of the committers you're unlikely to see it disappearing from
one day to the next :-) Right now we've got 10-12 active committers (active
as in one commit per week average) and since all the code is under the LGPL
license you don't risk having us going proprietary anytime soon either.
Basically it's a win-win situation for our users ;-)

We also spend quite a lot of time answering to questions on our users & devs
mailing lists (as you can see).

Additionally, should you ever choose to go for commercial support, you'll
find a bunch of talented people most willing to help you (that's us, the
folks at http://www.xwiki.com/ )

3. We do not currently have Java server experience; will XWiki be easy to
> install/run/manage securely without exposing ourselves and our clients to
> risks out of ignorance of the underlying technology?  Is it inherently more
> secure than using PHP on an Apache webserver (as I have read), or does it
> just come down to security awareness?


I'm not a security expert, all I can tell you is that XWiki is running
internally at companies such as EMC and EADS and their internal teams
haven't shut it down yet, so using the proper configuration making XWiki
secure should not be a problem :-)


> Any comments or additional information would be welcome. Excuse me if I
> have asked questions that are readily available on the website -- I have
> looked through the online documentation but have also evaluated many wikis
> and my eyes are starting to blur.


Let your eyes blur no more - I think XWiki would be a great match for you
(though I'm obviously deeply biased :-).


> Thanks very much,
> Trevor


We're looking forward to your feedback :-)

Guillaume


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Twitter: glerouge
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[xwiki-users] Wiki suitability by ACL, security, and support

2009-08-11 Thread Trevor
Hello. Please let me know if I'm using the wrong mailing list. 

I am currently evaluating XWiki (along with several other wikis) for use within 
our small development team. We will be sharing the wiki with clients as well, 
so we have several criteria that MUST be met:

1. WYSIWYG editing
2. Clean interface, small learning curve
3. Fine-grained user access to pages
4. Security (the wiki will be on a server exposed to the internet, but will be 
private)
5. Good support base

In trying out XWiki Enterprise and looking through the documentation I think it 
meets these requirements (definitely 1-3).

My questions are:

1. We will want to segregate the clients from each other (ie. they won't be 
aware of each other), but our development team would need one-login access to 
all content, across clients. ie. if a developer logs in, they would have access 
to all content; if client A logs in, they would only see client A's content, 
etc. Am I understanding correctly that with User Groups and proper ACL we could 
achieve this? 

2. I'm trying to get an idea of the support base behind XWiki: does the support 
and development rely on a small number of developers (or only one), or on a 
true community of developers?  I noticed the "XWiki Project Health" page is 
quite out of date (only going up to Nov/07).

3. We do not currently have Java server experience; will XWiki be easy to 
install/run/manage securely without exposing ourselves and our clients to risks 
out of ignorance of the underlying technology?  Is it inherently more secure 
than using PHP on an Apache webserver (as I have read), or does it just come 
down to security awareness?

Any comments or additional information would be welcome. Excuse me if I have 
asked questions that are readily available on the website -- I have looked 
through the online documentation but have also evaluated many wikis and my eyes 
are starting to blur.

Thanks very much,
Trevor
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