External Master Data in Alfresco: Integrating and Keeping Metadata Consistent Across Multiple Systems

Transcription

1 External Master Data in Alfresco: Integrating and Keeping Metadata Consistent Across Multiple Systems Oksana Alexey

2 Who are we? Oksana Project Manager / Trainer / Queen of the bees ITD Systems / Order of the Bee Alexey Chief Architect / Alvex Product Manager ITD Systems

3 Questions for the next 39 minutes What is Master Data? Storing Master Data in Alfresco External Master Data Complicated cases 5 Conclusion

4 What is Master Data? Storing Master Data in Alfresco External Master Data Complicated cases 5 Conclusion

5 What is Master Data?

6 Master data management is an integration between Alfresco and a complex set of third-party systems, that you are to meet when trying to use Alfresco in the wild.

7 1 2 What is Master Data? Storing Master Data in Alfresco Out of the box implementation Data-list based implementation 3 4 Integrating Alfresco with external Master Data Complicated cases 5 Conclusion

8 Constraints in the content model

9 Constraints in the content model + - Users can select a value from the list. Master data changes quite frequently. Business users do not like the idea to call IT every time they need new option in the drop-down list.

10 1 What is Master Data? 2 Storing Master Data in Alfresco Out of the box implementation Data-list based implementation 3 4 Integrating Alfresco with external Master Data Complicated cases 5 Conclusion

11 Data-list based implementation (1/5) Simple solution Several extensions to do it: Tony Parzgnat implementation Angel Borroy implementation Alvex releases older 2.1

12 Data-list based implementation (2/5) <appearance> <field id= dm:color > <control template= /form-controls/dynamic-dropdown.ftl > <control-param name= picklistname >Color</controlparam> </control> </field> </appearance>

13 Data-list based implementation (3/5)

14 Data-list based implementation (4/5) Solves basic issue quickly Business users can edit constraints in browser!

15 Data-list based implementation (5/5) - Updating a list of values Share-Tier Performance Permissions No native constraint Still no sync with external Master Data

16 1 2 3 What is Master Data? Storing Master Data in Alfresco External Master Data The Good The Bad 4 Complicated cases 5 Conclusion

17 External Master Data Assumptions: Master data is in 3rd party systems. These systems have remote APIs. Let's query them for reference data.

18 Architectural Choice Share Tier vs Repo Tier

19 Architectural Choice: Share-tier

20 Architectural Choice: Share-tier <field id= alvexdt:contract > <control template= /alvex-masterdata-select.ftl > <control-param name= url > </control-param> <control-param name= path ></control-param> <control-param name= label >contactcompany</control-param> <control-param name= value >contactcompany</control-param> </control> </field>

21 Architectural Choice: Repo Tier

22 Architectural Choice: Repo Tier <constraint name="alvexdt:docstatus" type="com.alvexcore.repo.masterdata.masterdataconstraint"> <parameter name="datasourcename"> <value>test</value> </parameter> </constraint>

23 1 What is Master Data? 2 Storing Master Data in Alfresco 3 External Master Data The Good The Bad 4 Complicated cases 5 Conclusion

24 External Master Data Quite obvious idea becomes tricky: Live data vs Cached data Performance and bottlenecks Changes in reference data

25 Dilemma: Live Data vs Cached Data Live Data Always actual Cached Data May be outdated Simple implementation Complex implementation Slow network Fast Service is unavailable? Always available

26 Performance Constraint is expected to be extremely fast Just reading field with list constraint with N values causes N+1 call to Constraint class. Caching of classifiers in Repo is not enough.

27 Changes in Reference Data Processing Updates Update items Processing Deletion Leave old value in existing fields Add new data Allow creating new data from Alfresco Migrate existing fields to the new one

28 Implementation Details (1/5)

29 Implementation Details (2/5)

30 Implementation Details (3/5)

31 Implementation Details (4/5)

32 Implementation Details (5/5)

33 Changes in Reference Data Processing Updates Update items Processing Deletion Leave old value in existing fields Add new data Allow creating new data from Alfresco Migrate existing fields to the new one

34 External Master Data: Demo

35 2 3 4 Storing Master Data in Alfresco External Master Data Complicated cases Handling Tree-Like Structures Constraints Inter-Dependencies 4.3 One-To-Many Relations 5 Conclusion

36 Complicated Cases Reference data is complex IRL: Tree-like hierarchies Inter-dependencies of constraints One-to-many mapping (one master data object to many content object properties)

37 Handing Tree-Like Structures

38 Handing Tree-Like Structures Jean Barmash implementation (2008) mment-80963

39 Constraints Inter-Dependencies

40 One-To-Many Relations

41 What is Master Data? Storing Master Data in Alfresco External Master Data Complicated cases 5 Conclusion

42 Fear and Loathing Under The Hood

43 Getting forms

44 Getting forms

45 Validations on Node Create/Edit

46 Validations on Node Create/Edit

47 Fear and Loathing Under The Hood: Summary Overloaded components: /api/formdefinition MasterDataAwareScriptFormService MasterDataAwareIntegrityChecker MasterDataAwarePropertiesIntegrityEvent

48 Roadmap Completely solve Complicated Cases Extract Master Data from Alvex to a separate extension

49 Resources GitHub Repo: