In an effort to make content management systems work more harmoniously with one another, the Apache Software Foundation has promoted its Apache Chemistry interoperability toolkit to a top level project.
Chemistry is an open source implementation of the CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) standard, developed by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). CMIS provides a set of bindings for accessing data across multiple CMIS-compliant systems, without the need to understand the specific interface for each system.
As organizations increasingly use content management systems to manage their digital material, they will need ways to share data across these systems. Today, most connections must be individually built on a system-to-system basis. "The big benefit of CMIS for customers is that it lets them do more with content no matter where it's located across the enterprise," said Richard Anstey, vice president of product management at OpenText, in a statement.
A number of content management system providers have already built the CMIS standard into their own products, including those offered by Adobe, Alfresco, IBM, Microsoft, Nuxeo, OpenText and SAP. Chemistry provides an open API (Application Programming Interface) to CMIS repositories, as well as a set of libraries -- for Java, PHP, Python and Microsoft .Net. -- to build CMIS-compliant repository connectors,
As top level project, Chemistry joins other high profile Apache projects such as the Hadoop distributed computing system, the Tomcat Web servlet container, the Cassandra database and the Apache Web server software. A not-for-profit corporation, the Apache Software Foundation offers organizational and financial support for nearly 100 open-source programs.
Graduation to a top level Apache project will give the Chemistry development team more resources as well as a better infrastructure to manage and development the software. As per the Apache bylaws, the group has formed a project management committee to guide its day-to-day operations, and operates under Apache's meritocratic, consensus-driven process and principles. The software itself is available as open source under the Apache Software License version 2.0.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com
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