Day Software announced the release of the Beta version of its Java Content Repository Extreme, also referred to as CRX. CRX is a commercial implementation of the Java Content Repository specification, designed on an "enterprise-class, 100% Java, J2EE architecture."

The Java Content Repository specification, JSR-170, is a unifying API for content storage and retrieval for Java. From the JSR reqest:

A content repository implements "content services" such as: author based versioning, full textual searching, fine grained access control, content categorization and content event monitoring. It is these "content services" that differentiate a Content Repository from a Data Repository.

Additional features of CRX include:

• Content Explorer, a user-friendly repository browser and administration tool
• Content Loader, an import tool with special features for XML data
• Content Zipper, an export tool that allows export into XML or ZIP formats
• User Management
• Nodetype Administration, a tool to help maintain node types
• WebDAV Support
• Cluster Manager
• LDAP Authorization

Day has a demo online, and you can also register to participate in the beta program.

Is CRX based on Apache Jackrabbit?

 http://incubator.apache.org/jackrabbit/index.html

Not that I can tell. Jackrabbit is the JCR RI; CRX looks like a clean-room implementation of JCR, based on Day's comments.

yes it is.

if you list the content of the crx.war file, you can find the jackrabbit jar.

Does it rely on jackrabbit for anything other than the interfaces, though?

the JCR interface javax.jcr.* are located in another jar and the jackrabbit should contains only the jackrabbit classes.

Okay. I haven't had a chance to evaluate the product fully yet, so it'll be interesting to see what it adds to the jackrabbit product - and how jackrabbit's progress affects CRX.

As you can see in Day's latest press release [1], we [2] have decided to partner with day to sell their commercial repository for our open source CMS Magnolia [3] as well as our obinary compass [4] and our upcoming products like Magnolia for Documents.

We believe that currently there are substantial benefits for our larger customers in using CRX compared to Jackrabbit. While Jackrabbit might eventually be as good as CRX, if you need the power today, you get it from CRX, not from Jackrabbit.

Day is leading the spec and has written most of the Jackrabbit code so far. I assume that their interest in moving Jackrabbit forward is to establish JCR as a standard, which is paramount to building a market in the first place.

After all, Oracle makes a living even though you can get other databases for free.

It is cool that our users have the choice between the two, and hopefully more repositories soon.

- Boris

[1] http://www.day.com/content/en/company/media/press_releases/obinary.main.html
[2] http://www.obinary.com
[3] http://www.magnolia.info
[4] http://www.obinary.com/en/compass.html

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Magnolia Content Management
http://www.magnolia.info/
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