WORKSHOP ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURES Information / software architectures based on Content Management Systems (CMS): some examples with Drupal Valeria Pesce (GFAR) IAALD 2010 side-event SupAgro, Montpellier, France 26 April 2010

CMS + external sources + commodity services AgriFeeds (  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 Regional network news events website website harvesting metadata filtering AGGREGATED VIEW FeedBurner Commodity services 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  2 nd version: 15% custom code  NEXT VERSION: >> 1% CUSTOM CODE

CMS as integrated solution 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