How to implement a JCR adaptor?

[Fredrik Jonson <fr...@myrealbox.com>]

Hello, 

I'm new to JCR and jackrabbit, and as far as the top down perspective
goes - from a content application perspective - I think I've understood
the basic concepts.

Now I wonder what's involved in publishing a JCR adapter - I hope I've
at least got the term right, I mean the back end interface to the data - 
from a legacy content store?

Take any generic java webapp that has a custom database design with users 
and data in a few simple database tables. What is the normal approach to 
make a such backend store available through a JCR interface? Say at JCR 
level 1.

Do I need to implement the (full?) JCR api from scratch? Or does
Jackrabbit supply any generic adapters that can be extended or something
similar? Where do I start?

-- 
Fredrik Jonson

Re: How to implement a JCR adaptor?

[Jukka Zitting <ju...@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On 1/4/07, Fredrik Jonson <fr...@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> I'm new to JCR and jackrabbit, and as far as the top down perspective
> goes - from a content application perspective - I think I've understood
> the basic concepts.
>
> Now I wonder what's involved in publishing a JCR adapter - I hope I've
> at least got the term right, I mean the back end interface to the data -
> from a legacy content store?
>
> Take any generic java webapp that has a custom database design with users
> and data in a few simple database tables. What is the normal approach to
> make a such backend store available through a JCR interface? Say at JCR
> level 1.
>
> Do I need to implement the (full?) JCR api from scratch? Or does
> Jackrabbit supply any generic adapters that can be extended or something
> similar? Where do I start?

While doable, implementing JCR adapters for legacy content stores is
by no means trivial. The SPI contrib project is currently building a
framework that should simplify the task.

In your case I would rather consider migrating to a full JCR
implementation like Jackrabbit instead of implementing a custom
adapter, but I understand that in many cases such drastic changes are
not justifiable.

BR,

Jukka Zitting