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ModeShape (formerly "JBoss DNA") is a JCR 2.0 (JSR-283) implementation that provides access to content stored in many different kinds of systems. A ModeShape repository isn't yet another silo of isolated information, but rather it's a JCR view of the information you already have in your environment: files systems, databases, other repositories, services, applications, etc. To your applications, ModeShape looks and behaves like a regular JCR repository. Using the standard JCR API, applications can search, navigate, version, and listen for changes in the content. But under the covers, ModeShape gets its content by federating multiple back-end systems (like databases, services, other repositories, etc.), allowing those systems to continue "owning" the information while ensuring the unified repository stays up-to-date and in sync. ModeShape repositories can be used in a variety of applications. One of the most obvious ones is in provisioning and management, where it's critical to understand and keep track of the metadata for models, database, services, components, applications, clusters, machines, and other systems used in an enterprise. Governance takes that a step farther, by also tracking the policies and expectations against which performance can be verified. In these cases, a repository is an excellent mechanism for managing this complex and highly-varied information. But a ModeShape repository doesn't have to be large and complex: it could just manage configuration information for an application, or it could just provide a JCR interface on top of a couple of non-JCR systems.

The Java Content Repository (JCR) standard, which is based on the Java Specification Requests JSR170 (version 1.0) and JSR 283 (version 2.0), provides a Java-centric object-oriented storage API specifically targeted at content management scenarios. The JCR is not a content management system or a full-fledged content management system API, but rather a content repository API. A content repository provides a common API for all content-driven applications and CMS components, which require access to the content. It provides methods to read, write, and query content. The primary motivation of the JCR standard is to provide a standard and vendor-neutral programmatic interface for content repositories, allowing applications of multiple vendors to interact efficiently.

"JCR v2.0 Specification (HTML version) Content Repository for Java Technology API Specification (JSR-283) "

"This page will be used to show solutions to common problems related to Apache Jackrabbit and the JCR API. These examples shouldn't be considered Best Practices - general error checking and exception handling have been omitted to keep the example code simple. "

" Apache SlingTM is an innovative web framework that is intended to bring back the fun to web development. Discussions about Sling happen on our mailing lists, see the Project Information page for more info. Apache Sling in five bullets points REST based web framework Content-driven, using a JCR content repository Powered by OSGi Scripting inside, multiple languages (JSP, server-side javascript, Scala, etc.) Apache Open Source project"

The Compact Namespace and Node Type Definition (CND) notation provides a compact standardized syntax for defining node types and making namespace declarations. The notation is intended both for documentation and for programmatically registering node types (if you are unfamiliar with JCR node types, you may want to read the general Node Types section first).

"The general architecture of Jackrabbit can be described in three Layers: A Content Application Layer, an API Layer and a Content Repository Implementation Layer."

Each node in a Jackrabbit workspace tree has a node type that defines the child nodes and properties it may (or must) have. Developers can use node types to define a custom content model for their application domain and have Jackrabbit enforce the constraints of that model at the repository level.

The previous sections have extensively used the CND notation to illustrate the examples. Now that the most important concepts have been demonstrated, this section will give an in-depth overview of the CND. JSR 283 further defines an XML-based format for defining node type definitions, however, it has not been finalized yet at the time of writing. A CND file contains a series of namespace declarations, node type definitions, as well as comments which are denoted with a double slash (//).