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A snippet on Apache Sling

We know everything is content.Content(Knowledge) management systems are widely used in various fields and is really an old concept.Usually data is stored in databases or file system as it is very easy to manage unless data is huge..When we consider filesystem, it is unstructured and hierarchical.Database is structured with a well defined schema but restricted by constraints and transactional behavior.Web 2.0 caused such an insurge of highly dynamic data into web.It became inevitable for collaboration and integration.If we have to access information of different
formats, then we can use content repositories; for its inherent nature of file system and database (with some extra features).Its a best of both worlds.Here is the definition of a content repository from from JSR-170 spec

A content repository is a hierarchical(tree like) content store with support for structured and unstructured content, full text search, versioning, transactions, observation, and more(they can be considered as content services).

It is like a high level information management system.It can have both text files as well as binary files like pdfs,docs,images etc

Apache Sling (with a new release of version 5) is an open source Web framework for the Java platform designed to create content-centric applications on top of a JSR-170-compliant (aka JCR) content repository like Apache Jackrabbit.If you use Sling, it will be easy to develop large websites with thousands of pages.It works on top of JCR.If we are familiar with configuration management systems like changeman,VSS or subversion we know how it is easy to manage content.It avoids spreading of files in webserver Sling process the HTTP request in a RESTful way.Sling uses scripts or servlets to render and process content.Modularization by OSGi (using Apache Felix ) concept which loads modules to memory dynamically.Sling uses JSP,ESP (server side ECMA script),Groovy etc.We can directly map URL to a content.I think I have to know more about OSGi to dig whats happening inside Sling.I believe Sling could be used in large websites like social networks.DevDay says how Open Social and Apache Sling fit together.

more on Sling later...

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