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
