Status, etc.

It's been a couple of years since I last posted to this blog - but there is a reason for that.

First, Manning decided that the sales volume of the MEAP edition of ManifoldCF in Action was too low to justify either an eBook round or a hardcopy release.  They need 200 sales per month minimum to achieve that, and at the time, ManifoldCF itself was an Apache project under incubation - albeit with a fairly large potential community, but not with a sufficiently large early community to meet those numbers.  So I was given the following choices: either just continue with the MEAP edition, or take it over myself without Manning's support.  I chose the former.

Since then, ManifoldCF itself has graduated from the incubator, and has had its 1.0 release as well.  As far as I can tell, it has a decent-sized following in the world at large now.  The book is somewhat dated, as you might expect, but not hopelessly so.  There is a second edition of the book I produced about a year ago which is more up-to-date.  But Manning seems uninterested in it for the moment.

Future editions of the book will need to cover the Java API in more detail, since there is now some interest in the community in using ManifoldCF in that manner.  But first, the team members have to decide exactly what the supported API actually includes.  That will likely take another year or two.

Best Regards,
Karl

ManifoldCF in Action at Apache Eurocon 2011 and Apachecon NA 2011

ManifoldCF in Action fully MEAPed back in August.  My apologies for not posting since then - it's been a busy time with the ManifoldCF project, including a new release, as well as the upcoming Apache Eurocon and Apache North America conferences.  I'm excited to be invited to speak at both of these.  At the first conference, in Barcelona, I'll be talking through the ManifoldCF security model - how it works, what it applies to, and who uses it.  There will also be a Q & A session with Eric Pugh and Shinichiro Abe, who have used ManifoldCF security for their clients and can answer in some detail how that worked out.  At the second conference I will be presenting more of a broad overview, going into many of the reasons to use the product, and the intellectual reasoning behind its design.


On top of that, I've been also publishing a blog for http://www.searchworkings.org.  This has a good deal of original content, as well as excerpts from ManifoldCF in Action included as white papers.  Check it out if you want Solr and Lucene expertise as well.

The other piece of good news is that we've finally decided where to put the Solr components that enforce ManifoldCF security.  After an extensive back-and-forth, these components have be incorporated as subprojects of ManifoldCF, so you will be able to simply deploy them.  This supercedes the example Solr security code example from ManifoldCF in Action, but in a good way - now you've got even less work to do!

Final review editing has been submitted!

The final review editing pass of the book is now complete.  The examples have been updated to use Solr 3.2, and I've also largely reworked Chapter 12.  Review comments for this chapter were mixed; some people really liked the content, while others found it technically too demanding.  So I cleaned up and clarified the text, and added a half-dozen diagrams, hoping to make it a little less challenging.

I also emphasized the optional nature of the chapter; you don't need it to write connectors or use the API.  The existence of the architectural chapters is a nicety, not a requirement, and the book makes sure you know what you need for a task without needing to know everything.

Manning is planning now to release the entire book through MEAP shortly, and enter the production process shortly thereafter.  At the end of all this, an e-book will be made available electronically.  Paperback will likely wait a while longer, if I understand it correctly.

The good news is that this gives time for even more feedback to be incorporated into the text.  I look forward to your comments!  Happy reading!

ManifoldCF in Action!

This blog is about ManifoldCF in Action, which is the relatively new publication from Manning Publishing written by me.  The book is meant to introduce Apache ManifoldCF to its natural community, and give people a roadmap for how they may interact with and extend it.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here!  First, what is ManifoldCF, and why would anyone want to use it?

ManifoldCF is an open-source Apache effort to provide incremental crawling services for a wide variety of repositories and target search indexes.  Supported proprietary repositories include Documentum, FileNet, LiveLink, Meridio, and SharePoint, and supported open "repositories" include the web, file systems, Windows shares, and JDBC databases.  ManifoldCF can also be readily extended by the addition of new connectors, making it possible for system integrators to add their own extensions to the platform.

ManifoldCF also includes support for the projection of a source repository's model of document security to whatever the target search engine or repository happens to be.  The ability to efficiently support native security is a major differentiator for this software, and is often essential for those clients who have invested heavily in proprietary content management systems.

ManifoldCF in Action first  introduces ManifoldCF, and as a first task sets out to teach the reader how to integrate ManifoldCF with the enterprise.  This includes UI integration, API integration, and security integration.  Next, the book describes how to write connectors of all kinds - those that connect to repositories, authorities, and different output systems.  Finally, a detailed architectural overview is presented.

If this interests you, consider visiting the ManifoldCF in Action Manning page  here.

Enjoy, and I hope to have more content soon!

Karl