[opencms-dev] OPENCMS STRENGTHS ON HIGH TRAFFIC WEB SITES... AND A WEAKNESS

[HERNAN - TFSLA]

Hi All! I was talking with Gottfried (a user in the list) about OpenCms
strengths and weakness compared to other CMS for high traffic web sites,
newspapers and magazines and I think, maybe, sharing this thoughts may help
us others in a 'evaluation' process.

Regarding the differences with DRUPAL for example, here are the most
important of them. I will drop a post on the dev list so we can gather other
people experience.

1) SCALABILITY: while OpenCms scales as a 'cluster' and content publishing
propagates automatically over the formation, a PHP solutions scales as an
'horizontal' replication. Most likely, you will have to replicate the .php
files using RSYNC or other copy mechanism. DB will need to be replicated as
well. Most definitly, you will need more hardware (possible cheaper, but you
will have to maintain more of them). 

Also, using OCEE REPLICATOR module we can easily provide a 'environment'
separation to comply with corporate users security guidelines.

2) PERFORMANCE: on DRUPAL for example you have an internal cache which, in
order to properly function requires an external cache mechanism: MEMCACHE,
APC or other PHP accelerator. Then you are heavy dependant on 'static
content' serving and DB caching.

On OpenCms deployments, you have at least five lines of caching:
- FLEXCACHE: this allow us to serve DYNAMIC content cached (pretty
important)
- STATIC EXPORT: enables us to use APACHE MEMCACHE / CONTENT EXPIRING
STRATEGIES. Mostly used to server IMAGES as static content.
- OCEE ACCELERATOR: a database cache. Most frequents queries will never get
to the engine
- CORE CACHE: an internal OpenCms cache (v7) for properties, objects, etc
- IMAGE CACHE: another internal cache system on v7
- MYSQL CACHE: querycache in case of MySQL

>From a performance point of view, using the same dynamic functionality,
OpenCms will made a better resource utilization due to their cache
strategies.

3) SECURITY: a site security will relay 'mostly' on the webmaster experience
on the technology they are using. Since PHP is a massive technology,
exploits are more likely to pop-up on the web. 

Nevertheless, OpenCms bring us a built-in security model which protects
'executable' instructions for a site (JSP) on a security repository
/system/modules/ which allow us to have a logical barrier.

4) TEMPLATES: we must kill the myth here. Today, building templates on
DRUPAL requires the following skills: HTML, CSS, javasript and knowledge on
the PHP functions Drupal exposes. Do you have to program on PHP? No, you
don't. 

On OpenCms, in order to create a template you will need: HTML, CSS,
javascript and knowledge of the OpenCms collectors and functions. Do you
have to be a JAVA programmer? No indeed. We have a lot of resources with no
JAVA programming skills creating templates on OpenCms.

Today, creating templates on any well known CMS requires similar skills.

5) A MAJOR COMMON WEAKNESS - PRODUCT ROADMAP: on Dec-2009 one of the
'fathers' of Drupal gives a conference on DRUPAL DEV CON 2009 called WHY I
HATE DRUPAL. http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/session/why-i-hate-drupal

The bottom line, Drupal today is more a movement rather than a product. It's
a very good CMS, but their grow is not organize and they move slow on the
'formal' releases. That's why you have tons of extensions and plugs to put
to drupal. To be fair, I think Wordpress is the most 'strict' on their
releases and ROADMAP vision. 

I think OpenCms stands on the middle. It seems to me, and this is a PERSONAL
OPPPINION, the Alkacon dev team and their collaborators have a pretty good
idea where the product is going. I don't feel this:
- to be a reflex of market needs
- is organize in a way the solution providers can actively give input  
- is public, so a customer choosing OpenCms will know were the product is
heading

What do you think?
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