Apache Sling: Bringing back the fun

Apache Sling logoIt is coming silent but all the more powerful: Apache Sling.

Sling’s slogan: “Bringing back the fun.”. Well, yeah. It does!

This article is about its concepts and everything you have to know about it. Important links and tutoring resources, what Apache Sling is, why it is powerful and why I like it even whithout having developed any application for it so far.

Background

Apache Sling is a web framework licenced under the Apache Software Licence. Born at Day Software and given to the Apache’s child foster care, it has now elaborated to a top level Apache project and has left the incubator status. Dear Sling, Day(ddy) has to be so proud of you.
Even if Day has given Sling to the Apache project, they are developing for Sling. As you can see at the Sling project members page, Day is still diligently developing on it and is even steering the whole project.

Concepts and technologies

Apache Sling is a content centric web framework. Following the approach, that everything is a ressource, ressources are accessed via ReST and stored primary in a Java Content Repository (JCR, JSR-170/JSR-283) such as Apache Jackrabbit. Apache Felix, an OSGi implementation, adds major flexibility features and improvements to it.
Subsuming those concepts and technologies to the real world, the composition called Apache Sling might be seen as very powerful and flexible. Especially concerning functional requirements such as business agility, web applications and web sites gain major benefits when using Apache Sling.

Details

Instead of re-describing all the neccessary information about Sling, just take a look at those two presentation from Carsten Ziegeler (major Apache Sling developer) and David Nuescheler (Apache Sling project leader). Both together offer a lot of basic information according Apache Sling, its usage and use cases and are a perfect introduction to the whole complex.

OSGi, Scripting and REST, Building Webapps With Apache Sling
Rapid JCR applications development with Sling
View more presentations from bdelacretaz.

In short: In my opinion

I really like the approach, Apache Sling is following. Especially when building web applications, published in the world wide web and not just within an intranet, content can be provided quickly and directly by the functional departments, modules aka plugins can be (de-)activated on the fly without any interferences to the service. And last but not least, Apache Sling harmonizes with nearly all other web frameworks and used technologies. Even if Sling uses a JCR, nothing keeps you away from using Spring, Hibernate or even JSF.
I, for myself, are very impressed by Apache Sling and its potential usage scenarios. I will use it within my next projects. But to do so, I have to tutor myself. I found several interesting and tutoring stuff which I like to share with you. Here you are…

Official tutoring resources

More tutoring resources

References and general resources

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