Cocoon or Presentation Server ? That is the question...

[rozwel]

Hi,

I'm currently starting a CMS project based on XML-related technologies
and I want to use an XML framework as the basis of my architecture. I
found two open source project that could fit my needs : Apache Cocoon
and Orbeon PresentationServer.

They seem pretty equivalent in terms of what they can do (as much as I
can figure it out from both tutorials I've read through) but I find it
hard to decide myself because :
- Cocoon is an ASF project, which is synonym of a great quality
platform, and there is the Lenya CMS to prove me that it can be used for
my purpose.
- PresentationServer has a wonderful documentation and is very
professional-looking (it was formerly a corporative project before being
integrated into ObjectWeb works), and what's the most important to me,
it uses a maximum of W3C norms that Cocoon replaces by its own languages
(XForms, XPL, etc.).

Has anyone already worked with one of those two frameworks ? Can you
give me your opinion, your experience feedback ?

Thanks in advance...

rozwel

 

[docbook.xml]

Hello,

You might also wanna look at http://axkit.org/ . It is also a ASF
project. But Axkit is based on PERL instead of Java.

I have implemented CMS for intranet use based on Cocoon. The CMS
converts DocBook content to other formats on the fly. Here is a sample
(partial) implementation: http://www.xml-dev.com/blog/index.php#88

I have been using Cocoon since 1.x. Version 2.1 is very stable campared
to the older version. The documentation for Cocoon is lacking, but it
is good enough for most purposes. The serializers + transformers +
matchers combo in Cocoon makes it very powerful.

I would suggest that you start with Cocoon (or Axkit if PERL works for
you), and see how the performance is.

Note: Cocoon comes with a stripped down version of Jetty. Think about
replacing it with a commercial servlet engine or Resin.

In Peace,
Saqib Ali
http://validate.sf.net

Hi,

I'm currently starting a CMS project based on XML-related technologies
and I want to use an XML framework as the basis of my architecture. I

 

[roz wel]

As I said the problem with Cocoon is that it doesn't use all the
standard technologies provided by the W3C. Moreover I've tried to
install Cocoon 2.1.6 on my JBoss 4.0 server and I got a lot of
exceptions whereas I had no problem with OPS. I think that it is much
more advanced but it is less known than Cocoon because it has become an
open source project quite recently.

As for axkit, I don't like Perl at all while I've been developing in
Java for 5 years.

So I think that I will use OPS...