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Apoorv Durga

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Joomla continues enterprise journey -- sort of

30-Jan-2012

Tags: Portals and Content Integration, Marketplace at Large, Open Source, Selecting Technology, Joomla!

This week, the Joomla! community released version 2.5 of its open source CMS package. There are many new features but the key highlights of the new release are:

• Multi-database support
• Upgraded search functionality with support for auto-completion and stemming
• Update notification and single click updates for Joomla! as well as any extensions

These features represent another step in Joomla's long, incomplete journey to try to become more amenable to enterprises. But before you get all excited and start thinking of using Joomla! for, say, your enterprise intranet, keep these points in mind:

1. While Joomla! announced added support for databases other than MySQL, in reality, it only adds support for Microsoft SQL Server. In fact, Microsoft's influence is quite visible (and is probably good for the project), and the new version also supports Microsoft Windows Azure. Support for others databases (Oracle, et.al.) remains in the works. As with all issues related to Joomla!, how soon extension developers update their code to take advantage of new platform capabilities will actually dictate how much you can adopt those capabilities. Many extension developers will update their code but many will not, so you will need to make sure the extension you want to use supports the database you want to use.
    
2. As for the search engine, it's really a core extension. So all you need to do is activate this (it's disabled by default). However, you will again need to make sure extensions are updated to take advantage of new search functionalities. Even if they are, there will be some issues in terms of managing the current search module's existing index alongside the new index.
    
3. And finally, for single click notifications to work, you will again need to ensure the extensions are updated to incorporate that.

So, overall, the new features are indeed useful, especially in an enterprise context. But a lot depends on extensions you plan to use and so make sure you plan well in advance. Consult the Web CMS Report for more details on potential gotchas here.

Finally, if you are upgrading your existing Joomla! installation or plan to deploy it for a new initiative, this would be the time to push extension developers to update their code.