WORKSHOP ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURES

Information / software architectures based on Content Management Systems (CMS):some examples with Drupal

Valeria Pesce (GFAR)

IAALD 2010 side-eventSupAgro, Montpellier, France26 April 2010

CMS + external sources + commodity services

AgriFeeds (www.agrifeeds.org)

Information architecture: individual sources “commodity services”

Software architecture: CMS to harvest, store and manage content

CMS + custom code for advanced filtering and custom feeds

“Commodity services”: feed generators like Feedburner, Google API for calendars, widgets exploiting the APIs of various popular RSS readers

Processing - search/display- sources commodity services

AgriFeeds architecture

Organization

Regionalnetwork

news events

newsevents

websitewebsite

websitewebsite

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harv

esti

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meta

data

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data

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filt

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AGGREGATED VIEW

FeedBurner

Commodityservices

CMS

Example: Upcoming Forestry Events

Item level: semantics come from the sources

Future versions: automatic indexing with controlled vocabularies

Feed level: semantics come from the system

Advantages

Information architecture: Relevant contents are stored and indexed without

human intervention Metadata standards are exploited

Software architecture: No need to write code from scratch No need to maintain code: relies on an active

community of developers

Complies with good practices in IM: re-use, re-usability, re-packaging, use of

standards

Challenges

Information architecture: Depends (partially: the basic functionalities rely

on the CMS) on the functioning and continued availability of the commodity services

Quality depends on the quality of the sources Software architecture:

Relies on the continued maintenance of the CMS The custom code needed to extend the basic

CMS functionalities needs to be maintained

1st version: 30% custom code 2nd version: 15% custom code

NEXT VERSION: >> 1% CUSTOM CODE

CMS as integrated solution

AgriDrupal(http://aims.fao.org/community/group/agridrupal)

Information architecture:- external sources - locally managed contents

Software architecture:• CMS to manage any kind of information using any metadata set

• CMS to interface web services, APIs, RDF, XML…

Coherent management metadata Model / content model

- search/display- exports

CMS as an “information management tool”CMS as an “information hub”CMS as a pool of specialized solutions

CMS for specialized functions

Through an extended use of metadata and workflows, a CMS can perform the functions of specialized software.

Example of document repository management in Drupal

Advantages

Information architecture:Both external and local contents managed through metadata models and content models flexibility and adaptability to standards

Software architecture: No need to write code from scratch No need to maintain code: relies on an active

community of developers One tool to manage everything

Challenges

Information architecture: Depends (partially) on the availability of good

sources Common vocabularies are needed

Software architecture: Relies on the continued maintenance of the CMS Functionalities limited to the functionalities of the

CMS The custom code needed to extend the CMS

functionalities needs to be maintained Specialized functions will not be as specialized as

in specialized software