IJSTE - International Journal of Science Technology & Engineering | Volume 3 | Issue 10 | April 2017

ISSN (online): 2349-784X

ECM Migration Strategy

Khushi Mukesh Shah
Student
Department of Computer Engineering
Indus Institute of Technology and Engineering, Indus
University, Ahmedabad, India
Mr. Jignesh Patel
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Engineering
Indus Institute of Technology and Engineering, Indus
University, Ahmedabad, India

Ms. Roshni Patel

Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Engineering
Indus Institute of Technology and Engineering, Indus University, Ahmedabad, India

Abstract
Alfresco, an open source ECM (Enterprise Content Management) system, is highly developed for business critical document
management. It has various content management support with a great variety of features and flexibility. It is one of the most used
content management system in the world. There can be number of possible ways to migrate the content from one ECM system to
Alfresco. A standout amongst the most proficient and practical technique is talked about here. As indicated by Alfresco, its
Migration Services Tool has been designed to deal with the exchange of all content, security and basic metadata (authorizations,
clients, and so forth) from the proprietary system to the Alfresco ECM.
Keywords: Alfresco, Content Management ECM, Metadata, Migration Services Tool
________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I. INTRODUCTION

Alfresco is considered the leading open source solution for Web and Content Management. What makes Alfresco unique is its
services, which can be easily extended with webscripts via RESTful services. [1] Migrating content to Alfresco nowadays is a piece
of all ventures in ECM frameworks because of the expanding pattern towards Alfresco. If hardware permits and database is solid,
Alfresco can be used to store infinite amount of data. [2] Firstly, content and metadata need to be imported from the source data,
often into a new folder structure based on the requirement. It incorporates new classification and taxonomy. Various logs are
generated to keep the record of each content and also versions are maintained accordingly. The reading and parsing of source data
and persisting it into database can be further combined with the Bulk Import tool provided by Alfresco Migration Services to store
the content into the desired path of Alfresco repository. Alfresco Bulk Import Tool is proven to be successful at ingesting vast
amounts of content into the repository at a high speed. This gives an effective execution and performance for migration. Alfresco
Migration Services is initially aimed at companies who wish to move from EMC Documentum and Microsoft Sharepoint, although
the company has said that it will offer a path to migrate from other proprietary systems in future. [3]

II. PREREQUISITES

For migration, firstly we need metadata and content of the source documents. The source of metadata can most commonly be a
JSON file, an XML file, or can be kept in database. The source of documents (content) can most commonly be kept on a local file
system, FTP, or database. However, it is a good idea to train the users in the new folder structure before they start copying
documents to it. [4]

III. SYSTEM DESIGN

The end users need to be able to copy or move documents — that they want to migrate — to a kind of staging area that mirrors the
new folder structure that we have set up in Alfresco. [3] Alfresco, being a very flexible tool, has given us multiple ways by which
we can interact with the software. And all of them can be used to inject data into the system. [1]
At one point there were some popular ways to migrate data, however each one of them have some inherent problems: [5]
 Alfresco JLan Server and ACP transfer are quite difficult to configure. Their performance is also not as good, and they are a
pain to use if you have to migrate 100GB+ data.
 Alfresco API means coding in extreme. It gives great performance but has security risks. The development cost is more
compared to other solutions as well. They are best in those use cases where you may have to migrate data in real time from
one system to another, or in other words integrate another system with Alfresco.
 Open Migrate and Bulk File System are third party tools.
This system is designed into three components:

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(IJSTE/ Volume 3 / Issue 10 / 052)

 Get metadata and content from the source.

 Process the metadata and content to ingest in Alfresco.
 Ingest the data or document in Alfresco using Bulk Import.

IV. ARCHITECTURE

Fig. 1: Architecture for Migration in Alfresco Framework

Note: This is a draft version. It can be further made advanced and customized as per the requirement.

V. COMPONENTS

Get metadata and content from the source

Metadata and Content has to be processed from the source document. Metadata and Content has to be mapped correctly to find the
precise content value.

Process the metadata and content to ingest in Alfresco

There can be two approaches for parsing a data source - Dynamic approach and Static approach.
Dynamic Approach
Firstly, the tool will parse the given file of a specific format from its source path. It will obtain the key values from the respective
parsed file, and the obtained content is passed to the respective POJOs (Plain Old Java Object).
Static Approach
First of all, it will obtain the property file which contains the data into key (unique name), value (path of that key like XPath or
JSONPath or columns of a table) pairs of specific fields or parameters which is to be used further. The tool will read the property
file and find the values in the specified source file. It will obtain the key values from the respective parsed file, and the obtained
content is passed to the respective POJOs. Once metadata are read, it should be persisted into the Database with content / document
information on which path as well as the type of the document is stored. The parsed file generated is such that it has the supported
format for storing in Alfresco repository.

Ingest the data or document in Alfresco using Bulk Import

The Bulk Import file system tool is the best way to import existing content into the Alfresco repository. It can copy new content
as well as replace existing content but it is not designed to fully synchronize the repository with local file systems and therefore
does not perform deletion tasks. Not only content, it can also migrate metadata and version history of files. [3] Alfresco bulk import
tool comes with in-built classes that can help you with migration. They are JAVA based and thus if you are using any other
language for your framework, you may have to adjust accordingly. [5]
There are two versions for Bulk Import Tool:
 In-Place Bulk Import: It is available in enterprise edition only. It imports files that already exists within the alfresco content
store. It is highly efficient as no copying or duplication is required.

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 Streaming Bulk Import: It is available to all the editions. It copies the source content data into the repository content store. It
can be triggered using an HTTP GET webscript
(http://localhost:8080/alfresco/service/bulkfsimport) as well as an HTTP POST webscript
(http://localhost:8080/alfresco/service/bulkfsimport/initiate).
It also shows the status of the process that is in-progress.
The files stored using Bulk Import can be seen in alfresco repository in the chosen target folder.

VI. CONCLUSION

Alfresco content platform is solidly reliable and secure for business critical data. It is mainly used for business process management
and enterprise content management. In the above discussed strategy for migrating the content from any ECM framework to
Alfresco framework, different customization are conceivable based on the requirements. Also security is kept up and henceforth
making it reliable. Versions and renditions are maintained in order to keep record of every change, and it is less tedious and
financially savvy. All these factors make it profoundly efficient. It simplifies the process of organizations who intends to switch to
Alfresco Enterprise.

REFERENCES
[1] David Caruana, John Newton, Michael Farman, Michael G. Uzquiano, Kevin Roast (2010, June 8) Professional Alfresco: Practical Solutions for Enterprise
Content Management [Online] Available: http://assettopbook.blogspot.in/2015/03/jle9vbest-professional-alfresco.html
[2] Pratyush Kumar (2015, March 24) Alfresco Data Migration - All you need to know (Part-1) [Online] Available: http://www.algoworks.com/blog/alfresco-
data-migration-all-you-need-to-know-part-1/
[3] Maxwell Cooter (2010, June 2) Alfresco offers migration tool for open source ECM (Software to move from proprietary systems) [Online] Available:
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2210881/applications/alfresco-offers-migration-tool-for-open-source-ecm.html
[4] Martin Bergljung (2011, February 8) Alfresco 3 Business Solutions [Online] Available: https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/alfresco-3-business-
solutions-document-migration-strategies
[5] Pratyush Kumar (2015, April 28) Alfresco Data Migration - All you need to know (Part-2) [Online] Available: http://www.algoworks.com/blog/alfresco-
data-migration-all-you-need-to-know-part-2/
[6] Martin Bergljung (2014, January 1) Principal ECM Architect lxxus (Summit 2014)
[7] Martin Bergljung (2014, January 1) Alfresco CMIS [Online] Available: https://www.scribd.com/book/272074883/Alfresco-CMIS
[8] Munwar Shariff, Snehal Shah, Rajesh R Avatani, Jayesh Prajapati, Vandana Pal, Vinita Choudhary, Amita Bhandari, Pallika Majmudar (2013, July) Alfresco
4 Enterprise Content Management Implementation, Third Edition [Online] Available:
https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Alfresco_4_Enterprise_Content_Management.html?id=BWkHFtpjv5IC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_butt
on&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

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