1 to 2 individuals involved, not clearly identified
Between 2 and 5 independent people
More than 5 people
Founders are former managers of Business Objects and Documentum . Core developers are identifiable on the forums
Score : 2/2
Management style
Complete dictatorship
Enlightened despotism
Council of architects with identified leader (e.g: KDE)
Identified roadmap, can evoluate with due to costumer request.
Score : 2/2
Activity
Developers, identification, turnover
Less than 3 developers, not clearly identified
Between 4 and 7 developers, or more unidentified developers with important turnover
More than 7 developers, very stable team
http://www.alfresco.com/about/people/
Score : 2/2
Activity on bugs
Slow reactivity in forum or on mailing list, or nothing regarding bug fixes in releases note
Detectable activity but without process clearly exposed, loing reaction/resolution time
Strong reactivity based on roles and tasks assignment
Tools provided; jira for bug reports and issues and forums for discussions regarding functionalities :
Jira: http://issues.alfresco.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa
Forum: http://forums.alfresco.com/
Score : 2/2
Activity on functionalities
No or few new functionalities
Evolution of the product driven by the core team or by user's request without any clearly explained process
Tool(s) to manage feature requests, strong interaction with roadmap
Difficult to use, requires an in depth knowledge of the software functionality
Austere and very technical ergonomics
GUI including help functions and elaborated ergonomics
A module is provided to customize the web UI, and changes can also be made by creating template by using the Freemarker langage.
Score : 2/2
Administration / Monitoring
No administrative or monitoring functionalities
Existing, functionalities but uncomplete and or need improvement
Complete and easy-to-use administration and monitoring functionalities. Possible integration with external tools (e.g: SNMP, syslog, ...)
With the version bundled with Jboss AS we can use the JMX console, to administrate MBeans .
Repository can be imported / exported via an admin console , and these actions can be scheduled .
Score : 1/2
Technical adaptability
Modularity
Monolithic software
Presence of hight level modules allowing a first level of software adaptation
Modular conception, allowing easy adaptation of the software by selecting or creating modules
Score : 2/2
Code modification
Everything by hand
Recompilation possible but complex without any tools or documentation
Recompilation with tools (e.g: make, ANT, ...) and documentation provided
Ant scripts , supplied documentation .
Score : 2/2
Code extension
Any modification requires code recompilation
Architecture designed for static extension but requires recompilation
Principle of plugin, architecture designed for dynamic extension without recompilation
Most extensions can be done by modifying XML configuration files . More extensive modifications will need recompilation .
Score : 2/2
Strategy
License
Permissiveness (only if user wants to become owner of code)
Very strict license, like GPL
Moderate permissive license located between both extremes (GPL and BSD) dual-licensing depending on the type of user (person, company, ...) or their activities
Very permissive like BSD or Apache licenses
alfresco2.0 is under GNU GPL with FLOSS Exception (http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Open_Source_Licensing )
Score : 0/2
Protection against proprietary forks
Very permissive like BSD or Apache licenses
Moderate permissive license located between both extremes (GPL and BSD), dual-licensing depending on the type of user (person, company, ...) or their activies
Very strict license, like GPL
Score : 1/2
Copyright owners
Rights held by a few individuals or entities, making it easier to change the license
Rights held by numerous individuals owning the code in a homogeneous way, making relicense very difficult
Rights held by a legal entity in whom the community trusts (e.g: FSF or ASF)
Rights held by Alfresco.
Score : 0/2
Modification of source code
No pratical way to propose code modification
Tools provided to access and modify code (like CVS or SVN) but not really used to develop the software
The code modification process is well defined, exposed and respected, based on roles assignment
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Source_Code
Score : 2/2
Roadmap
No published roadmap
Existing roadmap without planning
Versionned roadmap, with planning and measure of delays
Software has no sponsor, the core team is not paid
Software has an unique sponsor who might determine its strategy
Software is sponsored by industry
core team paid by Alfresco
Score : 1/2
Strategical independence
No detectable strategy or strong dependency on one unique actor(person, company,sponsor)
Strategical vision shared with several other free and open source projects but without strong commitment from copyrights owners
Strong independence of the code team, legal entity holding rights, strong involvement in the standardization process
Integration with others Open Source projects :
JBoss AS, Tomcat, Apache Myfaces.
Uses of standars like JCR170
Score : 1/2
Document content management
this section describe how the application manage document
Mime Type supported
text formats
HTML files
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
HTML files can be directly created via a basic inline editor ( TinyMCE)
Score : 2/2
RTF (Rich Text Format)
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
Score : 2/2
CSV
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
Score : 2/2
XML files
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
Score : 2/2
Office Suite
Opendocument files
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
Score : 2/2
MS Office files
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
Score : 2/2
PDF files
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
Score : 2/2
picture formats
common file format
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
png and PIXmap, Bitmap, jpeg
Score : 1/2
common vectorial format
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
SVG
Score : 2/2
commercial formats
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
AUTOCAD Drawing ...
Score : 2/2
Video Formats
MPEG Format
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
MPEG, MPEG2, MPEG4 fully supported, Quicktime
Score : 2/2
AVI Format
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
Score : 2/2
Dvix Format
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
Score : 0/2
Audio Formats
MP3 Format
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
Score : 2/2
Wav Format
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
Score : 2/2
Ogg Format
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
Score : 0/2
File Conversion
Text format
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
transformation from Text format ( .odt, .doc, .txt) to PDF using pdfbox .
Score : 2/2
Picture Format (jpg, png, bpm, gif)
not supported
partialy (buggy or limited feature)
fully supported
ImageMagick is integrated to convert pictures to GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD...
Score : 2/2
Audio Format
Feature is not supported
Feature is partialy supported
Feature is supported
Score : 0/2
Video Format
Feature is not supported
Feature is partialy supported
Feature is supported
Score : 0/2
File Manipulation
Compressed File Browsing
ZIP files
The engine see zip file as opaque binary
The engine can browse zip archive with limitation (need of a specific action from the use, content not indexed, no keyword can by attached to its content).
Zip archive are seen like common folder.
Score : 0/2
RAR files
The engine see rar file as opaque binary
The engine can browse rar archive with limitation (need of a specific action from the use, content not indexed, no keyword can by attached to its content).
Rar archive are seen like common folder.
Score : 0/2
TAR files
The engine see tar file as opaque binary
The engine can browse tar archive with limitation (need of a specific action from the use, content not indexed, no keyword can by attached to its content).
Tarball archive are seen like common folder.
Score : 0/2
Preview creation
Picture preview
The software can't create picture preview
The software create picture preview for all the major formats (jpg, png, bmp, gif)
The software can create preview for more than 10 pictures formats
Score : 0/2
OpenOffice files preview
The feature doesn't exist
Work fine for at last odt files
Work fine for the majority of the formats
Score : 0/2
MS Office files preview
The feature doesn't exist
Work fine for at last doc files
Work fine for the majority of the formats
Score : 0/2
Video preview
The feature doesn't exist
The software doesn't support the majority of the files
The software can create preview for a large amount of files
Score : 0/2
Audio files preview
The feature doesn't exist
Work fine for at last odt files
Work fine for the majority of the formats
Score : 0/2
Web content management
this section describe how the application manage web page
Blog
The feature doesn't exist
Work fine for at last odt files
Work fine for the majority of the formats
Alfresco provides a WCM module to manage web site, adding, deleting, web project..
Also "Blog Spaces" can be created allowing users to post, categorize, subscribe via RSS and comment on posts.
Score : 2/2
Support for new content or update notifications
recent changes advertised on the web interface
No such features
recent changes advertised according to the today's date
recent changes advertised only changes that happened since user's last visit
Custom freemarker dashlets can be added on the dashboard allowing to be notified of recent changes .
Score : 2/2
support for other notifications media
This feature doesn't exist
The feature exists for one communication media
This feature exists for several media: e.mail, and IM for instance
RSS, email notification are available but not IM.
Score : 2/2
Common Service
common services betwen ECM an Document managment
Support for search
Search Engine feature
No search engine available
Searches are limited (to filename, metadata or text content for instance)
Searches are feasable through most of the media content and the metadata
search can be done using Lucene , Xpath and Opensearch(Execution of searches is supported via HTTP requests and responses).
Search is possible on content metadata as well as full text search .
Score : 2/2
Search API for more detailed results in the contents and their meta-data
This feature doesn't exist
The feature exist but is limited.
This feature is fully powered
API provided for lucene and for JSR 170 for the content repository .
(http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Search )
Score : 2/2
Plugins, pluginability, built-in objects, and page templates
plugin ability
monolitic not pluggable
modular plugable but plugin not provided
modular plugins provided
Many plugins exist on the forge http://forge.alfresco.com/softwaremap/trove_list.php
divided in numerous sections like Metadata Extractors ...
Score : 1/2
XML/RPC Remote API
No such feature
poor API
rich API
Score : 0/2
web service plugin
No such feature
limited integration capabilities
good capabilities
many webservices available e.g for repository access and for authentication ( http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Alfresco_Content_Management_Web_Service.)
many web plugins downloadable from forge
http://forge.alfresco.com/ .
Score : 2/2
builtin objects or plugins
Calendars and Calendars events
No such feature
partially or poorly implemented
well done
an additional module exists based on AJAX technology.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ajaxcalendar/
Score : 0/2
polls and vote editing and publishing
No such feature
partially or poorly implemented
well done
This workflow is not present by default but can be added thanks to JBPM.
Score : 2/2
photo albums editing and publishing
No such feature
partially or poorly implemented
well done
Score : 0/2
slide show editing and launching within the internet browser
No such feature
partially or poorly implemented
well done
Score : 0/2
On line version control
online access to each pages/docs (of fully supported media) history/versioning
No history/versioning
limited number of document revisions
unlimited number of document revisions
Score : 2/2
online supports for version differencing diff and retrieving prior versions.
No diff feature
Revision Diffs with the latest
Revision Diffs with the all
Score : 0/2
online supports for retrieving/rollbacking to prior versions.
Many servlets allow HTTP acces to repository actions ( e.g : download content , execute templates or scripts , executing 'approve' and 'reject' workflow commands on a Node , ...)
Score : 2/2
Work Process
Description of the internal work proces
Edition tools
Journalised Changes
No revision control system exist.
Every saved document are archived. Go back to an old revision need an important amount of work.
Every change done with the internal editor are logged. It's easy to come back to an old revision of the document from another user.
Score : 2/2
Standalone edition tools
In oder to edit a document the user use the official tool.
It's possible to use a remote stand alone tool to edit documents.
All common feature are supported by a last one stand alone tool.
Can be done with OpenOffice and Microsoft Office.
Score : 1/2
Workflow
Lock
The feature doesn't exist
The feature just exists, an administrator can quickly unlock a file
The feature exist, administrator can quickly unlock a file and a timeout system exists to unlock file after a certain amount of time.
Score : 1/2
step by step workflow
The feature doesn't exist
The feature just exist
This feature is fully powered
Score : 2/2
BPEL support
The feature doesn't exist
The feature just exist
This feature is fully powered
Workflow desigend with JPDL JBPM can easely be added to Alfresco, and documentation
already exist and well done .
Score : 2/2
Meta data
Meta data are infromation related to a document like (author, copyright holder, ...)
Key word support
Can't add specific key words
Key word can be added but with limitation: limited list, no easy to way extend the list
key words easily added and features are easily extended
Metadata can be modified through the GUI . Aspects can be dynamically applied to documents to add metadata . custom metadata can be defined by extending the content model .
Score : 2/2
Hierarchical Classification
This feature doesn't exist
The feature exist but is limited.
A new document can quickly be registered in the hierarchy
Hierarchical Classification is easy : classification by user workspace, categories, and folders.
Score : 2/2
Architecture
Security
Authentification Backend
LDAP
No LDAP based authentification availble
LDAP availble but limited (e.g: group mapping limited, etc)
LDAP is one of the recommended authentification backend
Connector for OpenLdap and Active Directory available .
Score : 2/2
Active Directory
No Active Directory based authentification availble
Active Directory availble but limited (e.g: group mapping limited, etc)
Active Directory is one of the recommended authentification backend
Score : 2/2
data base
No data base base authentification availble
Data base availble but limited (e.g: group mapping limited, etc)
Data base is one of the recommended authentification backend
Score : 2/2
Signature
Feature not supported
Fetautre partialy supported
Feature fully supported
Score : 0/2
Digital watermarking
Feature not supported
Fetautre partialy supported
Feature fully supported
Score : 0/2
DRM
The feature doesn't exist
Fetautre partialy supported
Feature fully supported
Score : 0/2
SSL
The feature doesn't exist
Fetautre partialy supported
Feature is fully supported
With Apache mod_ssl to access the web client via https .
Score : 0/2
Storage
File System
Feature is not supported
Feature is partialy supported
Feature is fully supported
Implement the JSR 170 for the content repository .
Score : 2/2
Data Base
Feature is not supported
Feature is partialy supported
Feature is fully supported
Any database supported by Hibernate, including:
MySQL,
PostgreSQL ,
Oracle,
Microsoft SQL Server,
...
Score : 2/2
Data Warehouse
Feature is not supported
Feature is partialy supported
Feature is fully supported
Score : 2/2
Clustering
Multisite architecure
Application is not designed to support Multisite architecure
Can be done with a third party
Application supports Multisite architecure
This functionnality can be achieved by using Tomcat's or Jboss native clustering capabilities .
Score : 1/2
Load balancing
Application is not designed to support Load balancing
Can be done with a third party
Application supports Load balancing
Provided by apache mod_JK .
Score : 1/2
Fail over
Application is not designed to support fail over
Can be done with a third party
Application supports fail over
Provided by apache mod_JK .
Score : 1/2
Repository Replication
Application is not designed to support Repository replication
Can be done with a third party
Application supports Repository replication
Score : 2/2
Index Replication
Application is not designed to support Index replication
Can be done with a third party
Application supports Index replication
Score : 2/2
Administration
Rights
User's rights
Feature is not supported
Feature is partialy supported
Feature is supported
An administration console is available to handle user, group, rights .
Score : 2/2
Group's rights
Feature is not supported
Feature is partialy supported
Feature is supported
Possibility to create, and affect rights to new groups
Score : 2/2
Role
The feature doesn't exist
The feature exists but is limited
The Feature is available or can easily be simulated thanks to a powerful group system
Several predefined roles ( contributor , editor ... ) defining a combination of rights : read , write , create , delete , checkin , checkout ...
Score : 2/2
Web compatibility
all this section was validated thanks to http://validator.w3.org
Standards
HTML
Page not valid (parse errors)
Page not valid with important errors (encoding mismatch)
Page valid, or with minor errors (missing "alt" attribute, use of unknow attribute)
Score : 2/2
XHTML
Page not valid (parse errors)
Page not valid with important errors (encoding mismatch)
Page valid, or with minor errors (missing "alt" attribute, use of unknow attribute)
Score : 0/2
CSS
CSS doesn't or no valid not valide (parse errors)
CSS not valid with important errors (encoding mismatch)
CSS valid, or with minor errors (missing "alt" attribute, use of unknow attribute)
Score : 2/2
Best Practices
Table Positioning
systematically, too much used
not too much used
html tables are not used for layout/positioning
Score : 1/2
Frame use
systematically, too much used
frame are rarely used
frame are not used
Score : 2/2
iFrame use
systematically, too much used
iframe are rarely used
iframe are not used
Score : 2/2
css designed for printout
no
yes, but print-outs are not well rendered for a few use cases.
yes
Score : 2/2
Supported Browsers
Mozilla and Firefox
not supported at all
not officially supported, but works ok or good enough.
supported and advised browser
A plugin for Firefox also exist for Drag and Drop .
Score : 2/2
Konqueror
not supported at all
not officially supported, but works ok or good enough.
supported and advised browser
Score : 1/2
MSIE
not supported at all
not officially supported, but works ok or good enough.
supported and advised browser
Score : 2/2
Safari
not supported at all
not officially supported, but works ok or good enough.
supported and advised browser
Score : 1/2
legacy browsers
not supported at all
not officially supported, but works ok or good enough.
supported and advised browser
Score : 1/2
Required enablings
Javascript required
The interface makes no use of javascript, and thus, does not need javascript to run at full flavor and speed
The interface makes use of javascript but can properly function without it.
Javascript is necessary to use the interface (beacuse it's AJAX based for instance).
Score : 0/2
a Java plugin is required
The interface does not contains any applet, and thus, does not need java to run at full flavor and speed
The interface makes use of applet(s) but can properly function without it.
A Java plugin is necessary to use the interface, the applets are key players in it.
Score : 0/2
a SVG plugin is required
The interface does not contains any SVG graph, and thus, does not need any SVG plugin to run at full flavor and speed
The interface makes use of SVG but can properly function without it.
A SVG plugin is necessary to use the interface, the SVG graph are part of key features of the interface.
Score : 0/2
a flash plugin is required
The interface does not contains any flash graph, and thus, does not need any flash plugin to run at full flavor and speed
The interface makes use of flash but can properly function without it.
A flash plugin is necessary to use the interface, the interface is mainly made of
flash.
Score : 0/2
support for rss feed
This feature doesn't exist
The feature exists but is limited
This feature exists and feeds are tunable and/or atom feeds are available