Developing extensions for Hyland Alfresco Content Management systems can be daunting at first. But if you spend some time getting to know the Software Development Kits (SDKs) available to aid you in developing extensions, then the development journey will be much more pleasant.
There are mainly two development kits available:
* The traditional In-Process SDK 4.x. This SDK has existed since the beginning of Alfresco and has evolved several times. We cover it in detail and even look at an earlier version, 3.x, when containers weren't common practice.
* The new Out-of-Process SDK 5.x. This SDK follows newer best practices of keeping your extensions outside the Alfresco application, enabling easier upgrades of Alfresco and independent development, deployment, and scaling of your extensions.
Larger development projects involving multiple developers usually require some infrastructure, such as Artifacts Repository and CI server, to be considered. We look at how you can use Nexus Repository manager to store stand-alone extensions and how to build them with Jenkins CI Server.
This course is mostly about Alfresco Content Services (ACS) development and the officially supported SDKs. But we will also look at an unofficial SDK for developing extensions for Alfresco Process Services (APS), just so you know it exists.