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I am working with the Alfresco web service and looking at using it with another web application for content management. Our other web application will need a way to reference content that exist in Alfresco.

Are the Reference uuid's that alfresco generates guaranteed to be unique and are they guaranteed to even exist? I read in a wiki page that the uuid may be optional. I take that to mean that they may not even always exist and I guess could be null. The more I read the If it does not always exist or can be null is there a better identifier for content inside Alfresco? This is to be used with medical data so I need a 100% unique way to reference content that is stored in alfresco.

Link where I read that the UUID was optional: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Web_Service_Data_Types

startoftext
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  • Can you not just use the Alfresco nodeRef for each piece of content? That's how Alfresco itself references content, and each on is guaranteed to be unique in a given Alfresco repository. – Gagravarr Jul 06 '11 at 23:06
  • Interesting... but thats not really part of the web service. Is there an easier way to get that string value while working with the alfresco web service? The alfresco web service uses the class Reference which only contains the uuid and a path and path but does not contain the nodeRef. – startoftext Jul 06 '11 at 23:36

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A UUID is always unique. What you have read at the web services data is about providing an optional UUID.

How content is stored in Alfresco is like this.

A UUID points to a set of content (Wrapper), this set contains the actual object and metadata. You see the linking quite good when using versioning. You'll see that the same UUID points to even the updated content + metadata.

So it's guaranteed that it remains unique. Of course, if the content will be deleted so will the UUID.

I'd rather use the new CMIS implementation CMIS Link, than the webservices. Not that they aren't sufficient, but they are quite outdated and sometimes you need multiple WS call, which can be done in one CMIS call.

Tahir Malik
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  • I was not aware of the CMIS service. Looking at that link you provided, it looks as if the webservices are a part of CMIS? – startoftext Jul 07 '11 at 14:28
  • No, they are not. The Webservices is a different set of services and they use Axis 2.0. The CMIS services use Apache CXF, but that's a technical difference. CMIS stands for standardized services for any ECM system. So in theory you could bind you own application to any CMIS implemented system. Like Filenet, etc. So just take a look at CMIS and decide what's best for you. – Tahir Malik Jul 08 '11 at 14:51