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InfoQ Homepage News Adobe Acquires Java ECM Vendor Day Software

Adobe Acquires Java ECM Vendor Day Software

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Last week Adobe Systems announced that is was purchasing Day Software for 255 million Swiss Francs (approximately 240 million USD). Day Software sells tools targeted to helping marketing organizations create micro websites for specific regions and languages to support marketing campaigns. Their products include a web content management, digital asset management, and social collaboration solution bundled together as a suite called CQ5. All the solutions in CQ5 run atop a Java-based content repository named CRX.

The CRX content repository is a commercially bundled version of Apache Jackrabbit, which is itself an implementation of JSR-170 and JSR-238. Not coincidentally, JSR-170 and JSR-283 are both led by David Nuescheler, who is the CTO at Day Software. InfoQ interviewed Mr. Nuescheler about JSR-170 in 2008.

JSR-170/238 describe a way to structure data in a tree of Nodes and then associate an arbitrary number of Properties with those Nodes. Each property can be of any data type, ranging from strings to binary blobs. Additionally, one Node may refer to another Node, in much the same way that an object references another object or a row in one database table references a row in another database table. The tree of Nodes largely resembles a file system, implemented in Java.

But JSR-170/238 take the concept much further by adding locking and concurrency, versioning, and event monitoring, built-in. So, for example, if an application stored an image in the repository and wanted to watch for changes so it can update a content distribution network whenever the image changed, it could subscribe to notifications that the image changed. Likewise, if a document were stored in the repository and two editors wanted to change it simultaneously, then a JSR-compliant implementation (like Apache Jackrabbit) would prevent those users from colliding with each other.

Day Software’s CQ5 and CRX products rely heavily on the JSR-170/238 paradigm to add content to web sites on the fly and expose it in a RESTful way. The CQ5 suite also uses the Apache Sling web framework to allow marketing users to create web sites without intervention from programmers. The web content management and digital asset management products are entirely browser-based and users can create new sites by dragging and dropping new content, images, and styles onto a templated page. Additionally, CQ5 includes workflows for approving and translating new content as well as social collaboration components like calendars, event management, wikis and blogs.

As part of the deal, Day Software’s content management products become part of Adobe’s Digital Enterprise Solutions business unit headed by Adobe Vice President Rob Tarkoff. Day Software’s CEO, Erik Hansen, will report to Mr. Tarkoff. The merger is expected to complement Adobe’s moves into the web content management market by giving its Adobe Flex, Flash and AIR products an additional content platform to stand on.

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