Alkacon OCEE for OpenCms updated to version 2.1.4

Alkacon OCEE for OpenCms is a commercial extension for OpenCms that offers Support for LDAP, Clustering, Replication and improved performance. Full information about OCEE is available on the Alkacon website.

The latest OCEE release version 2.1.4 is an important update that comes with several new functions and improvements and fixes a few issues that persisted in the last release.

New features and improvements in OCEE 2.1.4 for OpenCms 7

  • Significantly improved OCEE Accelerator with new caching strategy that can reduce database requests by millions per day.
  • Improved OCEE LDAP Connector now features support for nested groups when using Microsoft Active Directory.
  • Improved OCEE Cluster Manager now supports installation and updating of modules within the cluster with shell commands.
  • Improved OCEE Replicator with better error handling in user replication scenarios.
  • Added option to write additional info values in the LDAP repository to the OCEE LDAP Connector.
  • Added deterministic id generation for LDAP groups/users to the OCEE LDAP Connector.
  • Fixed an issue in the OCEE Cluster Manager with export points not correctly being generated on remote servers.
  • Fixed an issue in the OCEE Accelerator with caching of non-existent resources in the offline project that caused errors in certain scenarios.
  • Fixed an issue in the OCEE Replicator where the resource id from the online project was used for replication.
  • Fixed an issue in the OCEE LDAP Connector where updating group membership on LDAP users triggered a clear cache event.

Bèr Kessels: HOWTO turn Drupal into an authenticate-only site with users from an LDAP directory.

Bryan's picture
Submitted by Bryan on
Authentication for a content management system through  LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is a big thing at the enterprise level.  LDAP is especially a big thing for larger organizations where they have lots of people and lots of accounts to manage over lots of locations.  Since my own workplace is just now branching out to using LDAP for something else besides e-mail, this post from Drupal's Bèr Kessels is very timely.  Even non-Drupal users interested in CMS and LDAP services should enjoy the post...as long as they're into IT that is...
Drupal has a fantastic feature, the hook_auth to allow any third party to interact in the authentication process. This is used to authenticate against other Drupal sites over XMLRPC, it is used in the experimental openID integration, to allow authentication against any database, and so on. And off course to authenticate against an LDAP directory, using the ldapauth module. This HOWTO helps you [get] on the track for the LDAP coupling. We use ldapauth.module, userprotect.module and Sympal Password Hijack to mould our Drupal site into an authenticate-only site.  Complete Story

Joomla! 1.5 Beta Arriving in October

Bryan's picture
Submitted by Bryan on

It was announced by Joomla.org that the Beta for Joomla! 1.5 is expected to be released on October 12th. Some of the goals and features that are to be included in this new version of the content management system are:

  • Substantial improvement in usability, manageability, and scalability. The project team's goal is to improve Joomla! "far beyond the original Mambo foundations".

  • Expanded accessibility to support internationalisation, double-byte characters and Right-to-Left support for Arabic and Hebrew languages.

  • Additional integration of external applications through Web Services and remote authentication such as the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

  • Enhanced content delivery, template and presentation capabilities to support accessibility standards and content delivery to any destination.

  • A more sustainable and flexible framework for component and extension developers.

  • Deliver backward compatibility with previous releases of components, templates, modules and other extensions.

Of all the features listed above, I would think organizations would be most excited about in Joomla! 1.5 is the ability to support remote authentication services such as LDAP. Most organizations would like to see their employees only have to log into their enterprise software once and not have separate user names or passwords to access e-mail, calendar system, groupware, and content management systems.