I’m searching for a free and open source document/content management system (web-based) to implement a download area, where some people can upload files, someother can download them, depending on permissions. It must be possible to create folders (for organizing the files) and to set permissions on both files and folders.
I already have database tables with users and groups of users (used in my main web application) and I would like to use the same users and groups in my new DMS webapp for granting permissions. Obviously avoiding to handwrite or to hardcode these data. In this way I could modify the data directly in the original DB in the future and it will remain up to date in the DMS.
Is there a DMS that allows to set where it has to retrieve users and groups data, also defining in which database, tables and fields? Or something else not so far from this.. like batch procedures that copy users and groups from my webapp DB to the DMS DB.
Here the products I already tried without success, grouped by the reason of discard.
Purpose problems:
- Plone, Magnolia, Riot, Walrus, fleXive, LibreSource, TransferCM, Jahia: are CMS with the purpose of building sites or managing sites contents, DMS is only a small part of the whole system
- Liferay, GateIn, Pulse: made for building portals or complex web applications
- Alfresco: seems great, maybe too many features for this case, but I’m trying to understand if (and how) an admin can manage group/user access to documents, inside the same site
- OpenCMS: too much complex for this case
- dotCMS: CMS for building sites, too much complex in permissions management
- Hippo CMS, CMS Container: seems not to handle permissions for document access (but only for publication)
- Orfeo, Jumper, DSpace, Daisy, eAdmin/OWX, Cofax, JadaSite, Maarch: built for different purposes
Access control problems:
- Jease: would be great (so simple and clear!), but it doesn’t manage groups and permission for users are over entire folders (where users can do everything with the files, not only view them)
- InfoGlue: good users and groups management, but permissions are only on folders and contents are not files but articles/images/templates/etc.
- LogicalDoc (ex Contineo): great CMS, with revision management etc., but permissions are only on folders
- jAPS: built for creating sites, with permissions only for groups, not for users
- Joomla! with DOCman component: permissions can be granted only to 1 user or 1 group
- Nuxeo DM: it’s a good DMS, but for collaborative work (not so suited for a download area), but the main problem is that permissions are only on folders, not on files
- Xoda, KRYSTAL DMS, yaDMS, PHP Navigator, DocumentManager: very simple, but permission only concerns global access to the system
- MeshCMS, Kordil EDMS, Simple Document Management System: very simple, no groups, no access control on files/folders
- eZimDMS: groups are not used for permissions on files/folders, but only for 3 global privileges
- OpenDocMan: similar to what I’m looking for, but groups are treated as departements, DB tables miss primary keys and you can’t create folders; I like its easyness, but globally it doesn’t seem so well done
Platform problems:
- Contelligent, Xinco DMS, jLibrary: its client is a desktop (not a web) application (for the second you have Java Web Start)
- OpenKM: it’s good, but it must work only inside jBoss and not in my Tomcat
Installation problems:
- Apache Lenya: I don’t know if it’s ok because I could not make it work and demos doesn’t work..
- Owl Intranet Engine: it has bugs and I can’t understand how it works
- DocMGR: supports LDAP, but I could not make it work; moreover doesn’t support IE7
- Epiware: no free version for Windows (unfortunately I’m under Windows)
Reliability problems:
- Corinis, Ion, AtLeap, Webman, webEditor, Open Harmonise, GeiNuke, Current CMS, Noah, Tiger DMS: seem abandoned
Thanks!
I finally decided to use a commercial client-server DMS and built on top of it a webapp for retrieving documents and their relationships. Documents access control is managed by the DMS, given username and password. Users and groups can be easily added to the DMS. This is the infrastructure: