[xwiki-devs] [discussion] Connector feature for XWiki

Hi Devs, I'd like to start a discussion about a Connector module for XWiki. XWiki is a great tool to create, edit and organize information. But while we can use macros to display external data, many XWiki's organization (such as the livetable), editing and viewing features can only be used for data stored in the XWiki System. However from time to time we've seen that it would be really interesting to: - allow editing/viewing of data from external systems using the XWiki form system - using livetable and search on external data I've been thinking for a while that we can achieve that in XWiki by transforming data read using an external API into XWiki Documents and then use the XWiki APIs to display that data. We can also implement livetable backends that would transform the livetable filters into query supported by the external tool. And if all this could be implemented as a "Connector Interface" most of the presentation code would be generic and we could develop and install connectors and magically you could make use of the XWiki development system to display, present and create forms to edit data. I've made a prototype for Salesforce and JIRA that shows the concept and what the API could be (in this case in Groovy) and wrote a design document that explains the system and the open questions: http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Design/ConnectorModule In my view this system is super powerfull if we can build it in the XWiki Core so that the view/edit/save/search can be hooked to the connector so that from the user experience the system is transparent to the user. WDYT ? Could the devs provide some insight of what the right architecture should be for such a feature. Ludovic -- Ludovic Dubost Founder and CEO Blog: http://blog.ludovic.org/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost GTalk: ldubost