MidCOM - Midgard Components Framework 1.0 released

MidCOM development was started by Linksystem Muenchen in March 2002, and it has evolved into a production-stable release. MidCOM is available under GNU LGPL.

Key features of the Midgard Components Framework include:

• Complete working Component Architecture that lets you build Websites with highly modularized components.
• The MidCOM Specification provide complete guidelines about namespacing which solves the problem of combining multiple components in a single site. The specs also define the exact interface between a component and MidCOM.
• Each component can by loaded dynamically as you need it during page output. Ideal for creating portals for example. You can even switch the style a component uses when it is loaded dynamically.
• An integrated caching engine is able to cache the output of MidCOM generated pages. It vastly accelerates average page deliviery times. Note, that this engine does fail on highly interactive websites.
• MidCOM is completly based on using the topic tree. You need only a single active page which activates MidCOM. It then works with the topic tree, which holds all neccessary information.
• Comonents are stored in a defined way within the snippet tree following SUN's Java Packaging naming convention. That should avoid any clashes in component naming of different companies.
• Reworked Style engine providing a far more flexible mechanism of putting Midgard Web Pages together. You can now dynamically switch to another style during output, this includes an automatism that lets you assign a style to a component in use that will be activated automagically during output.
• Automated Administration Interfaces that uses the component's interface to dynamically put together the Administrative website. It is fully customizable using CSS and a simple Midgard Layout.
• Data Management Class: Combines a tool to store arbitary data on a Midgard Object with a MVC-like form generator. You can now easily extend an Article Record by just adding a few lines to the Schema Definition in use. It can even handle multiple data schemas to let your users decide what type of record they want to create.

MidCOM 1.0 is available for download at:
http://www.nathan-syntronics.de/midgard/midcom/downloads.html

MidCOM requires working PHP 4.1.0+ and Midgard 1.4.4 installations.

More information

Torben Nehmer, MidCOM lead developer
torben@nehmer.net

http://www.midcom-project.org/

Midgard - Content Management Framework

Midgard is a freely available framework for Content Management Systems and other information management solutions. Midgard provides developers with an easy-to-use framework built on the common Apache, PHP and MySQL components.

Midgard development mailing list
dev@midgard-project.org

http://www.midgard-project.org/

And one note from Torben Nehmer: Many thanks to Henri Bergius from Nemein (www.nemein.com), he provided me with feedback, many good ideas and this release announcement.