Hi Will, Thanks for your answers.
If I understand correctly you are saying that it is possible to use Magnolia almost as-is to implement the various forms? How would I do that? Should I model each form as a Type and then create a Dialog to edit it? If yes, in my scenario I need to create the form instances and have the users fill them in. How would one go about creating one object of a given type for each object of a different type (e.g. create one object of type "Professor Info Sheet" for each object of type "Professor")? Thanks in advance Marios On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 22:14, Will Scheidegger <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi Marios > > I would say Magnolia is very suitable for the task at hand... but then > again: If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail! > > Amongst many other *client* projects we implemented a "hobby" project [1] > which covers many of the requirements you have described. This web > application manages sailing regattas (a couple of thousand), registrations, > members (roughly 20k) and so on and so on. As with your application > different users need to work with different forms: > - clubs, boat classes or regions can manage regattas > - members can register to participate in regattas > - the association can update member data and accounts > - and shortly there will be a public user registration for additional > functionality > > Some more answers to your questions: > - If you have to work with lots of legacy data and cannot move the data to > Magnolia, have a look at modeShape [2] > - Magnolia authentication and authorization is done via a standard JAAS > module so yes, it's quite a bit of work but you could do the LDAP > integration yourself. However you might consider getting an Enterprise > Edition license and > - save yourself the time to re-invent the wheel > - get supported software > - and it would still be open source! > > > -will > > [1] http://sailing.fastforward.ch/web/sailCal/en/regattas.html > [2] http://www.jboss.org/modeshape > On 22.01.2012, at 20:57, Marios Skounakis wrote: > > Hi all, > > I have not had any experience with Magnolia but I have been looking at it > for a couple of days as a candidate for basing a new system that I have to > develop. > > The system's requirements are as follows: > > - The application must model a university at a basic level - schools, > departments, courses, programmes, teaching staff, students. > - The goal of the application is that the content managers must be able to > create forms for gathering data about courses, professors, departments, > etc. They need to be able to change these forms by adding or removing > fields. > Examples of forms > - a professor information sheet that contains info such as publications, > research, other activities, etc) (one such form to be completed per > professor) > - a course evaluation form to be filled in by students (one such for per > course and student) > - a programme statistics form with statistics such as the number of > graduates, average tuition duration, etc (one such per programme). > - Users must be able to log on to the system and fill in the forms for > which they are responsible (e.g. a professor to fill in his information > sheet, a student to fill in evaluations for his courses, a secretary to > fill in the programme statistics sheet). > > I was originally planning to implement this application with the Spring > Framework and a MySQL database. The data would be stored in a typical > relational model, except for the form data which would follow a variation > of the Entity-Attribute-Value model. > > Then we decided that it would be useful to have some simple CMS > functionality such as the ability to create pages with static html > content, manage news, have a simple FAQ section, maybe a feedback form, > maybe forums. > > So we started wondering whether it may be better to use a CMS as the basis > of the application and extend it with the university data modeling and our > forms functionality. > > It seems to me that Magnolia is suitable for this system. I am thinking > that I can get the basic CMS and user functionality from Magnolia and then > find a way to integrate into Magnolia the part that handles the forms > (perhaps by implementing a module or by using Blossom or some other way). > > So I would like to ask the list if Magnolia can be easily used for this > kind of task, or if, for someone not familiar with Magnolia, will it be > very hard to master it and integrate it with a custom application? > > I also have some more questions: > - Would it be possible to use the JCR to store the university data? > Normally I'd use a standard relational model for these. Are there efficient > mechanisms for updating and querying the JCR? A lot of the university data > will be migrated from other systems - is this easy to do with the JCR? Is > it possible to use Magnolia to provide a basic interface for managing this > data using the dialog functionality? > - If not, is it possible to use MySQL for Magnolia's data and add some SQL > tables to the same database to handle the university data? > - For storing the form data I was originally planning to use a variation > of the Entity-Attribute-Value model. Can this be handled by the JCR or is > it better to use a SQL table? > - There is a requirement that all components used must be GPLv3. This > excludes the LDAP module which is proprietary. Will it be very hard to > implement LDAP integration from scratch? > > Assuming that the part of the system where users fill in the forms can be > a separate page and not part of a page, what would be the easiest/most > clean way to implement it? > > Thank you very much in advance. > Marios Skounakis > > > ------------------------------ > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > For list details, see > http://www.magnolia-cms.com/community/mailing-lists.html > Alternatively, use our forums: http://forum.magnolia-cms.com/ > To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[email protected]> > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > > ------------------------------ > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > For list details, see > http://www.magnolia-cms.com/community/mailing-lists.html > Alternatively, use our forums: http://forum.magnolia-cms.com/ > To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[email protected]> > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > ---------------------------------------------------------------- For list details, see http://www.magnolia-cms.com/community/mailing-lists.html Alternatively, use our forums: http://forum.magnolia-cms.com/ To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[email protected]> ----------------------------------------------------------------
