Drupal oh Drupal how do I interoperate with thee? Let me count the ways....interoperability between Alfresco and Drupal allows developers to build systems that take advantage of the complimentary strengths of both systems. As you can imagine, there are a number of different ways to integrate the two platforms. Some of the decision points that need to be considered are: Push vs pull, CMIS vs custom webscripts and when to align the users between Alfresco and Drupal instances. This talk will explore various patterns of integration and the use cases that they are best suited for.

1. WCM Solutions with Drupal and Alfresco!
Richard McKnight - @rmknightstar!
Ian Norton - @iannorton!

2. Introduction!
About Drupal
Why Integrate
Different ways to integrate
Some real world examples

3. About Richard McKnight!
Technical Consultant – Alfresco
• 30 Years of technical experience.!
• 10 years of content management experience
including Alfresco, Drupal, Teamsite and a
number of home grown solutions.!
• Richard has been known to VPN in on a heavily
modified and overclocked Silent-700!

4. About Ian Norton!
Web Architect – Alfresco
• 7 Years content management experience.!
• Open Text LiveLink WCM.!
• Open source alternatives.!
• Alfresco & Drupal.!

5. About Drupal!
Web Content Management
• Founded in 1999!
• Made open source in 2001!
• Gained momentum in 2005!
• Used largely on a LAMP stack, also works with IIS, PostgreSQL,
SQLite!
• Used by MTV UK, Sony Music, The Whitehouse, AOL!

6. PHP CMIS Wrapper – making it possible!
Written by Richard McKnight
• Contributed to Apache Chemistry!
• Used by the Drupal, Wordpress, SugarCRM!
• http://chemistry.apache.org/php/phpclient.html!

7. Why would you want to integrate?!
Alfresco is great at:
• Workflow!
• Collaboration Management!
• Version control!
• Document Management!
• Can handle large objects through open
protocols (FTP / WebDav, CIFS)!
It’s not so great at:
• Previewing pages in context!
• Web presentation management!

8. Why would you want to integrate?!
Drupal is great at:
• Presentation management!
• In-context editing!
• Quick, cheap and easy setup and host!
• Large active community!
It’s not so great at:
• Document management!
• Document collaboration!
• Document versioning!
• Managing large objects!

9. Alfresco and Drupal – connecting CMISʼly!
• CMIS provides a lot of the basic functionality to move content back and forth
between the two systems.
• It is a standard that can be used with other repositories .
• It allows PHP developers to develop solutions with out learning Java or
JavaScript.

10. Decisions, decisions, decisions!
More than one way to skin a cat,
• CMIS vs Custom web scripts!
• Push vs Pull!
• User management!

11. CMIS vs Custom Web Scripts!
• CMIS can be used OOTB and requires no repository tier
programming.!
• Custom web scripts can be more efficient (both in size of responses
and number of responses).!
• Custom web scripts can allow you to move business logic from the
client into the repository!
• Content policies allow you to enforce certain business rules!

12. Push vs Pull!
PUSH!
• It is possible to push content into Drupal via RPC calls (on the Drupal
side) as proper Drupal nodes.!
• In this instance drupal would be treated as a deployment target. (I
have an old WCM example that may warrant re-factoring)!
PULL!
• The CMIS Module uses a pull mechanism!
• CMIS Sync actually pulls the content and caches it!
• Some of the other modules just pull the content and displays them!

13. User Management!
The users in the Drupal Tier may or may not be the same as
the users in the authoring tier
• Intranet Sites!
• Users should be aligned!
• Authenticating against Drupal should also log you into Alfresco.!
• Extranet Sites!
• Consider two tiers of users in the Drupal tier!
• Public Web Sites!
• Drupal may only have a limited set of admin users.!

14. Drupal CMIS Project!
CMIS Contributed Project
• Uses the PHP CMIS Wrapper!
• http://drupal.org/project/cmis!
• Contains CMIS Query, CMIS Browser, CMIS Sync and CMIS Module
APIʼs!
• Allows Drupal developers to build on scaffolding provided.!

15. CMIS Views & CMIS Search!
Building on the CMIS Project
• Built for the team.alfresco.com website, extended for the forthcoming
partners site refresh.!
• Create a block a CMIS Sourced content (a folder)!
• Theme and display that block anywhere in Drupal!
• Save blocks in Drupals database!
• Demo!
• http://drupal.org/sandbox/IanNorton/1270012!

16. Canopy – From Appnovation!
An Alfresco Drupal Integrated Solution
• Synchronizing content!
• Content types mirrored on each system!
• Custom configuration for in both Alfresco and Drupal!
• Ideal for managing business logic in Alfresco!
• Find out more at –
http://www.appnovation.com/drupalalfresco-integration-solution-canopy!

17. Questions?!