CODEWITHSUNDEEP
alfresco
Srinath
Srinath

Reputation: 1343

alfresco database

How can we extend the Alfresco database? I need to add new tables to the existing database structure.

Does alfresco support this?

thanks in advance, sri..

Upvotes: 4

Views: 3980

Answers (6)

George Scott
George Scott

Reputation: 11

Alfresco and Activiti come with a database. It is not good to access the database directly. Doing so can cause unexpected locking behavior or exhaust connection pools on the DB. This turns out into performance problems and other kinds of issues are possible too. In case you want to update Alfresco or Activiti you can do it through APIs. Easy to extend, easy to customize and hassle free integration capability are some of the reasons which has made http://loganwinson.doodlekit.com/blog/entry/4249216/top-things-to-know-about-alfresco-development>Alfresco web development popular among businesses.

Upvotes: 1

Younes Regaieg
Younes Regaieg

Reputation: 4156

Depending on your use case, you may or may not need to play directly with the[/a] data base. I think your use case should fall in one of the following:

Use case 1: You need to setup some metadata on folders and/or documents. You may have to nest multiple levels of nodes with different sets of custom metadata on each level.

  • You probably need to extend alfresco models in order to define custom document/folder models that best suits your business requirements. Please check jpotts' tutorial to learn how to do so.

Use case 2: You need to define multiple lists with different sets of properties, those lists may or may not be linked to some content in your alfresco repo.

  • You probably need to learn more about alfresco sites' datalists, once you do so you may be interested in learning how to extend OOTB alfresco content model, jpotts' tutorial would be a good starting point, and then you should be checking this tutorial in order to learn how to manage datalists in stand alone aikau apps/share pages.

Use case 3: You need to leverage a relational database in order to define and leverage you complex business logic that do not fall in any of the use cases defined above.

  • Are you sure you do not want to code a brand new app leveraging a technology that you are familiar with and have it communicate with alfresco using RESTfull api/cmis/.... ?
  • Are you sure alfresco is THE way to go ? If so, and you still want to have your custom complex business model in a bare relational database:
    • Please consider using a separate database instance / database for your custom extension, this way you would be sure any new patch/upgrade to alfresco that may change database structure won't affect your extension (or at least wont give you hard time upgrading it)
    • If you are really tied to only 1 database instance / 1 database schema, you will probably want to precede your table names with some prefix and hope none of alfresco future upgrades would have new tables with the same prefix. You probably also need to make sure to manage your database config wisely (connection pools ..) so neither your alfresco instance nor your custom extension have to starve. (make sure you close the connections you are opening)

Upvotes: 1

Krutik Jayswal
Krutik Jayswal

Reputation: 3175

Changing alfresco database is not recommended.Content Model will be the good way.If such requirement is mandatory than,

You can use spring with hibernate for database connection.Properties which is required for connecting database are all ready declared inside alfresco-global.properties which is located inside "tomcat/shared/classes/".

For Spring bean injection you can declare beans inside any file which ends with "-context" which resides inside "tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco/extension" folder.

I will still recommend developer to use content model.

Upvotes: 2

Dzung Nguyen
Dzung Nguyen

Reputation: 71

Advices from alfresco engineers are do not touch alfresco database. Please take a look at this page. http://forums.alfresco.com/forum/general/non-technical-alfresco-discussion/where-alfreso-user-details-are-stored-i-alfresco

Upvotes: 2

pedrofalcaocosta
pedrofalcaocosta

Reputation: 811

I think changing the alfresco db model is never a good solution. Some alfresco upgrades are made using Schema Upgrade Scripts, and that could get messy.

Have you tried to extend the alfresco content model? Alfresco support some data types, allowing you to persist data. The Web Script framework allow you manipulate all your data inside your content model.

If your data is not suitable for a "content model", I think you should create a new database to hold your data.

Upvotes: 21

Hugo Palma
Hugo Palma

Reputation: 3566

Well, it is just a database. So you can create as many new tables as you want just like you would in any other database. Obviously Alfresco won't use them because it doesn't know them, but you can query the tables as you like.

Upvotes: 4

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