[opencms-dev] Migrating an existing website to opencms

[Paul D. Bain]

At +0200Wednesday 5/12/04 11:33 AM, Andreas Seidler wrote:

>Hi,
>
>We have been tasked with the "migration" of our university institute's
>website to opencms. The website's content (staff, teaching, projects,
>publications) is stored in an Oracle database. The current (Java-based)
>system generates pages dynamically at runtime (using the Mercatis library
>for database access and the WebDixie library for presentation).
>
>One of the main goals of the project is giving staff members the ability to
>use the WYSIWYG editor to manage the content of "their" pages (classes,
>projects, publications, ...). This leads us to the following questions:

>1) Is a "migration" of the type of system described (lots of cross-referenced
>data) to opencms a viable solution and worth the effort (i.e. is opencms
>well suited for this type of website)?

         Probably.  OpenCMS has built-in link checking, but I am not 
certain as to whether the links would survive the migration.

>2) How does one get the content stored in the external database (from an 
>opencms point
>of view) into the opencms WYSIWYG editor (and out of it)?

         The servlet container executes Java servlets (i.e., the OpenCMS 
code) that pull data from the RDBMS (by executing SQL statements) and sends 
the data to the web browser, which runs the WYSIWYG editor.

>3) What would be the recommended approach to migrating a system of the
>described type to opencms?

         That's a difficult question. There are two parts to my answer, a 
part that is _not_ specific to OpenCMS, and a second part (Part two, below) 
that _is_ specific to OpenCMS.

Part One:
==========

         Slashdot had an article on this topic a few months ago:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/21/003207

My comment on the question posed in the Slashdot article was the highest 
rated comment:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=82941&cid=7267134

See also:
http://www.cmswatch.com/Features/TopicWatch/FeaturedTopic/?feature_id=103


Part Two:
===========

         This topic has been discussed on this mailing list often in the 
past. See these prior emails:

1) From Thomas Gagne, 11 Feb. 2004, "Using DB import instead of  'the hard 
way'  "

2) From David Seikel, 21 May 2003, "Making JSP Templates"

3) From Michael Goodwin, 22 Jan. 2004, "Importing an existing website"

4) From Barde Cedric, 20 Feb. 2003, "Importing an existing website"

5) From Alex Kandzior, 9 Feb. 2004, "Maximal file upload size"

         I hope that helps (HTH).

Sincerely,
Paul Bain