What's new in Alfresco 7.1

[angelborroy]

This blog post describes the new features added to the product with the release of Alfresco 7.1.

Enterprise

• Support for Alfresco Search Enterprise 3.0 with Elasticsearch
• Support for Direct Access URLs for Content Stores using AWS S3 storage

Community

• Secure SDK events gateway
• Shared Secret HTTP Header protocol for Repository-SOLR communication
• Alfresco In-Process SDK 4.3
• Alfresco Out-Of-Process SDK 5.1.1

Support for Alfresco Search Enterprise 3.0

Enterprise only feature.

Alfresco Content Services 7.1 supports the Elasticsearch platform for searching within the repository using Alfresco Search Enterprise 3.0.

Before considering this product, review the list of unsupported features, since it may not be covering your use case.

Alfresco Search Enterprise 3.0 is using Elasticsearch instead of SOLR (currently used in Search Services 1.x and 2.0) for searching and indexing features. Additionally, the architecture of the product is quite different from the previous one. The Indexing feature is provided by a Spring Boot application called Alfresco Elasticsearch Connector and this application is split into two main components called Live Indexing and Re-Indexing. Searching feature is provided by Alfresco Repository.

Live Indexing

Live Indexing service is populating a standard Elasticsearch server with metadata and permissions consuming events produced by Alfresco Repository in Alfresco ActiveMQ. Content is indexed by using the Alfresco Transform Service, that also relies in ActiveMQ for request and response messages coordination.

This approach is recommended to be used for new deployments or for deployments that has been indexed with the Re-Indexing application previously.

Re-Indexing

Re-Indexing application is populating a standard Elasticsearch server with metadata and permissions reading information from the Alfresco database. Content is also indexed using the Alfresco Transform Service.

This approach is recommended to upgrade existing deployments.

Searching

Searching feature is provided by Alfresco Repository, that should be configured to use the new elasticsearch Search Subsystem.

Support for Direct Access URLs

Enterprise only feature.

The main purpose of Direct Access URLs is to accelerate the local download of content.

Alfresco Repository Content Store must be using AWS S3 for storage, since this feature is generating S3 pre-signed URLs for sharing objects.

ACS REST API has been extended to include required actions:

POST '/nodes/{nodeId}/request-direct-access-url'
POST '/nodes/{nodeId}/renditions/{renditionId}/request-direct-access-url'
POST '/nodes/{nodeId}/versions/{versionId}/request-direct-access-url'
POST '/deleted-nodes/{nodeId}/request-direct-access-url'
POST '/deleted-nodes/{nodeId}/renditions/{renditionId}/request-direct-access-url'

Secure SDK events gateway

Community and Enterprise feature.

The Event Gateway SDK produces internal events flagged for external consumption. Those events are then consumed by the Event Gateway Service and routed to various destinations such as the queryable Event Store, Global Public Event Topic, subscription triggers, and the Event Archive.

This project provides the framework, including all the interfaces and default implementations of the different services to support basic event subscription and filtering (by event type).

This new SDK improves the usability of the Alfresco Out-Of-Process SDK, adding a mediation layer for the events produced by the Repository able to classify the different type of messages and to route specific events to selected services.

Shared Secret HTTP Header protocol

Community and Enterprise feature.

Shared Secret HTTP Header procotol is a new communication alternative for the existing protocols:

• Mutual TLS, based in electronic certificates for Alfresco and SOLR authentication
• Plain HTTP, based in Web Proxy rules since no authentication is happening between Alfresco and SOLR

This protocol requires a common shared secret to be configured in Alfresco Repository and Search Services.

Repository

solr.secureComms=secret
solr.sharedSecret=sharedSecret

Search Services

alfresco.secureComms=secret
alfresco.secureComms.secret=sharedSecret

Once both services have been configured, communications will happen using plain HTTP requests with that shared secret property in HTTP header. This would prevent unintended accesses to searching and indexing requests in the system.

Alfresco In-Process SDK 4.3

Community and Enterprise feature.

Available in Maven Central, this is the SDK provided to develop Alfresco extensions to be deployed as addons in the platform.

Alfresco Out-Of-Process SDK 5.1.1

Community and Enterprise feature.

Available in Alfresco Nexus Repository, this is the SDK provided to develop Alfresco extensions consuming events from the Repository. These applications may be deployed independently from Alfresco platform.

We'll be posting additional content on this features in the next days!