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

2. 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
- search/display
- sources
 Processing 
 commodity services

3. AgriFeeds architecture
CMS
news events
Organization
website
harvesting
metadata filtering
news events
Regional network
website
AGGREGATED VIEW
FeedBurner
Commodity services

4. Example: Upcoming Forestry Events

5. Item level: semantics come from the sources
Future versions: automatic indexing with controlled vocabularies

6. Feed level: semantics come from the system

7. 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

8. Challenges Information architecture: Software 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  2nd version: 15% custom code
 NEXT VERSION: >> 1% CUSTOM CODE

9. CMS as integrated solution
AgriDrupal (
Information architecture: - external sources - locally managed contents
Software architecture:
- search/display
- exports
 Coherent management  metadata Model / content model
CMS to manage any kind of information using any metadata set
CMS to interface web services, APIs, RDF, XML…
CMS as an “information management tool”
CMS as an “information hub”
CMS as a pool of specialized solutions

10. 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

11. 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

12. Challenges Information architecture: Software 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