for developers

OpenACS for developers

Features

Besides the quality components of Openacs (See: openacs-system), OpenACS has these enterprise-quality features for developers:

• high-performance XML data processing with easy, powerful Tcl scripting functionality using tdom (as of OpenACS version 5.0)
• XOTCL object-oriented scripting, which combines the ideas of scripting and object-orientation in a way that preserves the benefits of both (as of OpenACS verison 5.3)
  
• Automated testing (see: Testing_with_Selenium and testing-with-tclwebtest)
• Flexible and easy caching, for improving the performance of your websites. http://openacs.org/doc/tutorial-caching.html
• programming in Tcl with AOLserver - A lightweight, simple, extremely fast scripting language that features a clean, easy-to-understand API (Application Programming Interface) for generating websites from the database. (See: http://openacs.org/doc/programming-with-aolserver.html )
• pooled DB connections (which reduces database connection startup and teardown time), much like the technique JDBC uses, but predating it by many years. (See: http://www.aolserver.com/docs/admin/dbadmin.html#2 )
• Component package system for easy installation and upgrading of packages (See: http://openacs.org/doc/apm-design.html
• Upgrade paths for code and database schemas (See: http://openacs.org/doc/tutorial-upgrade-scripts.html )
• Full internationalization, including an excellent workflow for translating content into new languages. (See: http://openacs.org/doc/i18n.html )
• Fully functional content repository and content management system. (See: http://openacs.org/doc/cms/cms-intro.html )
• An elegant templating system that separates code from presentation of content. (See: http://openacs.org/doc/templates.html )
• An object system that resides on top of the database, permitting site developers to create complex applications using an object API. Examples include an object level permissions system, audit trails, and ability to relate one object to another. (See: http://openacs.org/doc/object-system-requirements.html )
• OpenACS is released as open source under the GPL license, with millions of lines of open-sourced applications available to use as examples. There are also pre-written packages for you to use or adapt.

will be pulling in docs from here: http://openacs.org/doc/acs-package-dev.html and http://openacs.org/doc/acs-plat-dev.html

• OpenACS: robust web development framework (PDF)
• XOTcl for OpenACS developers (PDF) - includes basics of object-oriented programming
  
• OpenACS Tcl API
• OpenACS PL/SQL calls
• Coding Standards Index

Integrated Development Environments (IDE)

These text editors are commonly used when coding on OpenACS:

• ide-emacs
• ide-vi 

Bibliography and Credits

See doc-credits.