We have many custom and off-the-shelf applications to manage document mgmt like scanning, indexing, storage,workflow etc in our company,
We want to get started with Alfresco to completely manage our document management process.
This requires integration with external databases, interfacing with existing Java infrastructure and internal Oracle DB.
Since there is huge amount of information for Alfresco on the web, i want to know how do we go ahead with Alfresco. Any specific tools of Alfresco i should be using and how easily can i revamp our existing process with Alfresco.
Please advise.
Support for Oracle database is only provided by the Enterprise version of Alfresco.
In order to let Alfresco be the one an only hub of your document processes, and to benefit from its features, you will most likely need to migrate your preexisting content into the Alfresco repository. Then, you'll need to integrate external systems in some ways. There's a good tool to do massive import of content into Alfresco.
Alfresco is quite powerful when it comes to extension/integration points, the most useful are usually Web Scrips, which provide a REST API that allows you to control your content, workflows, life, universe and everything using plain HTTP calls. There is a huge number of Web Scripts available OOTB, but you can easily add custom ones, both Javascript or Java implementation are directly available, and PHP, Groovy and Clojure as external plugins.
Several other possibilities are provided to expose content to external systems or users, such as WebDAV, CIFS (Alfresco as a shared drive), SOAP, ....