Introduction

We are pleased to announce that Jackrabbit Explorer, an administration tool for JCR repositories, is now available for download on Google Code.

It’s exciting to be able to contribute something back to the JCR and Jackrabbit community, and we’d welcome feedback and feature requests (and bug reports!) for Jackrabbit Explorer via the Google Code project.

What is JCR and Jackrabbit?

JCR stands for Java Content Repository, an open standard for defining how repositories of content should manage and present access to their data. Apache Jackrabbit is the standard “reference” implementation of the JCR specification, and is used by many open source and commercial content management systems, including Magnolia CMS and Jahia. However, Jackrabbit can be used for much than just content management systems, due to its abstraction of content from implementation; for example, at Priocept we used Apache Jackrabbit as the core of a services-based Content Platform for TUI Travel, connecting 200 websites to a common content store via web services.

For more details, take a look at our recent post Content Management vs. Content Repositories vs. Content Platforms which puts all this in context.

5-Minute Intro to Jackrabbit Explorer

Jackrabbit Explorer is an administration tool for JCR and Jackrabbit content repositories. Jackrabbit Explorer uses the SmartGWT from Google for a rich in-browser user experience for repository administrators, and supports all three repository models (Model 1/local, Model 2/JNDI and Model 3/RMI).

We’ve put together a few screenshots to give a flavour of the features offered by Jackrabbit Explorer. Click on the thumbnail images for a larger version :

Login – Choose Repository Type

Content Tree with Node Types

Context Menu for Node Operations

Node Details

Full Text Repository Search

Background

Priocept took the lead in developing Jackrabbit Explorer due to the lack of available or recent tools for managing Jackrabbit repositories independently of applications. We were inspired by CRX Explorer from Adobe/Day, which provides many useful features for repository administrators, such as security management, mixin management and node version management.

We made extensive use of Jackrabbit Explorer during the development of a Content Platform for TUI Travel, which uses Jackrabbit as the core content store.