The ArsDigita Community System (ACS) was an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

toolkit for developing community

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

s developed primarily by developers associated with ArsDigita Corporation. It was licensed under the terms of the

GNU GPL The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

, and is one of the most famous products to be based completely on

AOLserver AOLserver is AOL's open source web server. AOLserver is multithreaded, Tcl-enabled, and used for large scale, dynamic web sites. AOLserver is distributed under the Mozilla Public License. AOLserver was originally developed by NaviSoft under ...

. Although there were several forks of the project, the only one that is still actively maintained is

OpenACS The ArsDigita Community System (ACS) was an Open-source software, open source toolkit for developing community web applications developed primarily by developers associated with ArsDigita Corporation. It was licensed under the terms of the GNU Gene ...

. Features of ACS included a core set of APIs, datamodels, and database routines for coordinating information common to all community web applications, as well as modules such as workflow management,

CMS CMS may refer to: Computing * Call management system * CMS-2, a programming language implemented for and used by the United States Navy * Code Morphing Software, a technology used by Transmeta * Collection management system for a museum coll ...

, messaging, bug/issue tracking, project tracking,

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

, and bboards.

History

ACS was built in the mid-1990s to support the photo.net online community as well as a variety of Internet services from Hearst Corporation. Its creator, ArsDigita, was founded in 1997 by developers such as Philip Greenspun. The initial developers included Tracy Adams, Ben Adida, Eve Andersson, Jin S. Choi,

Philip Greenspun Philip Greenspun (born September 28, 1963) is an American computer scientist, educator, early Internet entrepreneur, and pilot who was a pioneer in developing online communities like photo.net. Biography Greenspun was born on September 28, 1 ...

, Aurelius Prochazka, and Brian Tivol. The ACS was originally written using the

Oracle database Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a proprietary multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation. It is a database commonly used for ru ...

and AOLserver threaded web server and thus was a combination of

SQL Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

templates, and

Tcl TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company ** TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited ...

code to merge database results with templates. ACS 3.4, however, was also available with Java Server Pages to run with Apache and Tomcat. In 2001, the code tree was forked, with the Tcl code base being maintained and refactored by one group of developers, while the product line was being re-written in

Java EE Jakarta EE, formerly Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), is a set of specifications, extending Java SE with specifications for enterprise features such as distributed computing and web serv ...

. In 2002,

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

acquired ArsDigita and all of its assets. As a result of this, the Java version was renamed "Red Hat CCM", and official support for the Tcl version ceased. However, the Tcl version continued to be maintained by the OpenACS community.

OpenACS

The Open Architecture Community System provides: * A set of applications, that can be used to deploy web sites that are strong on collaboration. Some of the applications are Workflow,

, Messaging, Bug/Issue tracker,

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

ger,

chat Chat or chats may refer to: Communication * Conversation, particularly casual * Online chat, text message communication over the Internet in real-time * Synchronous conferencing, a formal term for online chat * SMS chat, a form of text messagi ...

and forums. * An application development toolkit, that provides an extensive set of APIs and services to enable quick development of new applications. Features include permissioning, full internationalization,

Ajax Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * Ajax (play), ''Ajax'' (play), by the an ...

, form builder, object model, automated testing, subsites and a powerful package manager. OpenACS runs on

and

NaviServer NaviServer is a high performance web server written in C and Tcl. It can be easily extended in either language to create web sites and services; there are over 35 modules available (including database integration or protocol support for UDP, SM ...

with either

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL ( ) also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source software, free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. PostgreSQL features transaction processing, transactions ...

as its database. Projects that were or are based on OpenACS includ
dotLrn
dotFolio, dotCommunity, dotConsult
Project-Open
an
Voice Online Communities

References

External links

* ACS may be downloaded from http://www.eveandersson.com/arsdigita/acs-repository/
Official website
* the philosophy behind the toolkit is explained at http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/community {{Web frameworks Free software programmed in Tcl Free web development software Information technology management Publication management software Red Hat software

History

OpenACS

See also

References

External links