What about CPS?

About the future of Nuxeo CPS

What about CPS 3.4?

We will support CPS 3.4 for at least 3 years after the initial CPS 3.4.0 release (March 2006). No new major features will be added from now on but we will continue to release “bug fixing” minor versions (at a rate of 2-3 versions/year).

For existing users and customers, you can safely continue to use your CPS instances. Upgrading is not mandatory. You will be able to install minor release when they will be available.

Will Nuxeo release new major versions of CPS?

A new major version, CPS 4, will be released during Q4 2006.

What is CPS 4?

CPS 4 is the missing link between CPS 3 and Nuxeo 5 (our next, Java-based platform), between pure Zope and pure Java. CPS 4 already includes several Java technologies and integrates them seamlessly with our Zope-based framework.

We will support it for 3 years and it is the basis of some ongoing projects, expected to go live before the end of the year.

The big improvement of CPS 4 is the replacement of Zope’s specific storage (ZODB FileStorage) by a JCR-compliant storage. All documents and contents are directly and transparently stored into Apache Jackrabbit. This allows CPS 4 to scale to very large amounts of data while delivering high performances.

In addition to a JCR-compliant storage, CPS 4 features:

• Pervasive Unicode support
• Apache Lucene -based index and search engine (replacing Zope’s ZCatalog)
• JCR-based data schemas
• Better SQL interaction for CPSDirectory
• Improved content model and schemas
• CPSDashboard to easily creates content/activity dashboards
• Improved file transformation engine (Nuxeo Transform, JEE 5 based)
• New rule engine (JBoss JRules, through NXRules)
• New global audit trail to trace user’s and document’s activity
• Improved relation engine with RDF support (CPSRelation)
• Better comment system (based on relations)
• Better usability

From a functional point of view CPS 4 is very oriented towards large document management systems, with collaborative features.

From a technical point of view, CPS 4 uses the Nuxeo 5 storage model (into Jackrabbit) and some Nuxeo 5 components (NXTransforms, NXRules) through wrappers. It is the first step of the JEE migration.

What about CPSCourrier ?

We just released a new version of CPSCourrier based on CPS 3.4. CPSCourrier already includes some of the new features of CPS 4 :

• Apache Lucene -based index and search engine (replacing Zope’s ZCatalog)
• CPSDashboard to easily creates content/activity dashboards
• Reporting facilities based on Eclipse BIRT

This new version of CPSCourrier has been build to be very easily customizable (using GenericSetup extensively) and has very good performance independently of the storage volume (thanks to Lucene).

CPSCourrier will very soon be upgraded to the CPS4 infrastructure and will remain the main mail management solution of Nuxeo for at least 18 months.

About the migration

How and when can I migrate my CPS instance to Nuxeo 5?

We expect Nuxeo EP to be iso-functional with CPS by the end of this year. In fact, due to Nuxeo 5 architecture and infrastructure, it will be able to deliver a lot more than CPS out of the box (query, rules, integrated network-aware messaging, reporting, etc.).

What is the migration path from CPS 3.4 to Nuxeo 5?

We will provide tools and procedures to migrate from CPS 3.4 to Nuxeo 5. This will be achieved by connecting an existing CPS instance to a new Nuxeo instance, and pushing the content and configurations from the former to the latter.

What about existing content?

Existing content will be able to migrate from CPS 3.4 and 4 to Nuxeo 5 without data loss. For versions of CPS prior to CPS 3.4, you will be expected to first upgrade to CPS 3.4 before migrating to Nuxeo 5.

What about existing configurations?

Nuxeo will release migration tools that will convert CPS’s GenericSetup configurations to Nuxeo 5 configuration profiles. The majority of existing configuration (content schemas, layouts, themes, etc.) will be automatically migrated to Nuxeo 5.

What about custom development?

Automatic migration of specific Python scripts and Zope products will not possible due to technology and architecture impedance mismatch. You will need to port them to the new platform manually.

Of course, as Nuxeo 5 benefits from Nuxeo's five years experience building ECM applications with CPS for real customers, it will offer natively many features currently developed as custom plug-ins to CPS. Therefore, the need for custom developments will be less than with CPS.

I have to start a project, should I use CPS 3.4, CPS 4 or Nuxeo 5?

It mainly depends on your needs and on your schedule.

If you need to deploy right now and if you do not require custom development, you can safely deploy CPS 3.4 and initiate a migration to Nuxeo 5 by the end of the year 2006 or later. If you need to deploy in 1-2 months, you can safely use CPS 4 (which will be released in October 2006).

If you need to deploy in more than 3 months, you can wait for Nuxeo 5 and go with it!

Where can I get support for the migration?

You can get support from the Open Source community using CPS mailing-lists and the CPS community portal.

Nuxeo offers commercial support. See: Nuxeo Support Offers.

For current Nuxeo customers, we are offering fix-priced migration services. With this solution, you can control you migration budget as Nuxeo takes the responsibility for iso-functional migration of your existing applications. Contact us at contact@nuxeo.com.

About the CPS users, developers and administrators

I know how to use CPS, will I have to start from scratch?

Nuxeo 5 improves current concepts and paradigms, but current CPS users won't have any problems to use the new software.

I know how to manage CPS, will I have to start from scratch?

Management procedures and tools will be different, but we already are working on the documentation, usage paradigms are kept and we are relying heavily on standards (like XSD). This means that the new platform will be a lot more accessible than CPS.

I know how to host CPS, will I have to start from scratch?

Hosting and management procedures will be very different from CPS ones. But we are using standard Java EE procedures so any people with Java EE skills will be able to make CPS run. Moreover tons of documentation are available on the web.

I know how to customize CPS, will I have to restart from scratch?

You will have to learn how to customize and configure Nuxeo 5. But as we are based on Java EE and are heavily relying on standards, it will be easier than with CPS. Moreover, a lot of documentation on basic principles (language, Java EE platform, JSF etc.) is available on the web or in books, and we are also working on the documentation for Nuxeo 5.

You must be crazy! How will you (or I) ever be as productive and flexible with a static language like Java than with a dynamic one like Python?

It's possible to develop efficiently and with pleasure in Java when you're using a modern IDE. Leveraging all the great open source Java libraries (from Apache, JBoss, Eclipse, OSGi and other organizations) also helps being more productive by writing less code. Writing and running unit tests, a pillar of agile development, is done similarly or more efficiently in Java using an IDE (because, for instance, coverage data are can be directly displayed in the code browser of the IDE).

We've also experienced that most of the flexibility that was provided by Python and the Zope component architecture, and that was useful for writing ECM applications, is now available on the Nuxeo platform thanks to the Nuxeo Runtime.

Overall, one of our major goals when designing the Nuxeo 5 architecture was to make third-party development and customization on top of the platform as efficient and pleasant as possible.