DEV Community: shikha

Alfresco Share Customization Guide: UI Extensions, Dashlets & Surf Configuration

shikha — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 20:00:00 +0000

Alfresco Share provides a highly extensible web interface for enterprise content management, but real-world implementations often require much more than the default UI.

Custom dashboards, Document Library actions, business-specific metadata, conditional actions and integrations are common requirements in enterprise Alfresco projects.

In this guide, I explore the architecture behind Alfresco Share customization and explain how its major extension mechanisms fit together.

What the guide covers
Alfresco Share customization architecture
Apache Surf fundamentals
share-config-custom.xml
Surf Extension Modules
Custom Dashlets
Share and Repository Web Scripts
FreeMarker templates
Document Library custom actions
Evaluators
Metadata customization
JavaScript and CSS extensions
Packaging and deployment
Performance and security
Upgrade-safe customization practices

One of the most important principles is to avoid directly modifying Alfresco's out-of-the-box Share resources whenever a supported extension mechanism can achieve the requirement.

A maintainable customization should ideally be:

modular → source-controlled → testable → deployable → upgrade-aware

Architecture at a glance
Browser
↓
Alfresco Share
↓
Surf Components / Dashlets / Web Scripts
↓
Alfresco Repository
↓
Database / Content Store / Search

The complete article includes practical examples and architecture diagrams covering everything from custom Dashlets to enterprise deployment.

👉 Read the complete guide:
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/09/alfresco-share-customization-ui-dashlets-surf.html

🇫🇷 French version:
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/09/personnalisation-alfresco-share-dashlets-surf.html

Kafka Deployment Architecture on Kubernetes: Scaling, HA & Monitoring

shikha — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 06:30:00 +0000

Learn how to design and operate a production-ready Apache Kafka deployment on Kubernetes with effective scaling, high availability, persistent storage and monitoring.

Read in English:
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/09/kafka-deployment-kubernetes-scaling-ha-monitoring.html

Lire en français:
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/09/deploiement-kafka-kubernetes-scalabilite-ha-monitoring.html

Alfresco Content Modeling Tutorial: Custom Types, Aspects & Metadata Design

shikha — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 05:30:00 +0000

A well-designed content model is the foundation of an organized and scalable Alfresco implementation.

In this practical tutorial, we’ll explore how Alfresco content modeling works and learn how to define custom types, reusable aspects, properties, constraints, associations and metadata.

Whether you’re an Alfresco developer, solution architect or technical consultant, this guide will help you build content models that are easier to maintain and extend.

Continue Learning

The original article is available on Learn IT with Shikha:

Read the original Alfresco Content Modeling Tutorial

A French version is also available:

Modélisation de contenu Alfresco : types, aspects et métadonnées

If this tutorial helped you, follow me for more practical guides on Alfresco, Camunda, BPM, Java, Spring Boot and enterprise technologies.

This tutorial was originally published on Learn IT with Shikha.
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/09/alfresco-content-modeling-custom-types-aspects-metadata.html

You can also read the French version of this Alfresco tutorial.

Modélisation de contenu Alfresco : Types personnalisés, Aspects et Métadonnées

Apprenez la modélisation Alfresco : types personnalisés, aspects, propriétés, contraintes et conception des métadonnées.

shikhanirankari.blogspot.com

Follow for more practical tutorials on Alfresco, Camunda, BPM, Java and Spring Boot.

Kafka Security Best Practices: SSL/TLS, SASL, ACLs & Enterprise Governance

shikha — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 05:30:00 +0000

Apache Kafka often becomes the backbone of enterprise event-driven architectures—but securing Kafka requires much more than simply enabling SSL.

A production-ready Kafka security strategy needs to address four fundamental questions:

🔒 How is data encrypted in transit?
🔑 How are producers and consumers authenticated?
🛡️ What is each identity authorized to access?
🏛️ How are permissions, credentials and security policies governed?

In this guide, I cover a layered Kafka security architecture using SSL/TLS, SASL, SCRAM, ACLs, service identities, secrets management, monitoring and enterprise governance.

Canonical/original article:

Read the original Kafka Security article on Learn IT with Shikha

Kafka Security Best Practices: SSL/TLS, SASL, ACLs & Enterprise Governance

shikha — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:30:00 +0000

🔐 Securing Apache Kafka in an enterprise environment requires much more than enabling encryption.
A production-ready Kafka platform needs a layered security model covering SSL/TLS encryption, SASL authentication, ACL-based authorization, least-privilege access, credential management, auditing, monitoring and enterprise governance.
In my latest technical guide, I explain how these security controls work together to protect modern Kafka-based event-driven and microservices architectures.
🇬🇧 English Version
The English guide covers:
SSL/TLS encryption for Kafka communication
SASL authentication mechanisms
Kafka ACLs and authorization
Least-privilege security
Producer and consumer security
Certificate and credential management
Auditing and monitoring
ACL vs RBAC
Kafka security in Kubernetes and cloud environments
Enterprise governance and security best practices

Read the complete English guide
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/kafka-security-best-practices-ssl-sasl-acls.html

🇫🇷 Version Française
🔐 La sécurisation d'Apache Kafka en environnement d'entreprise ne se limite pas au chiffrement des communications.
Une architecture Kafka sécurisée doit combiner SSL/TLS, l'authentification SASL, les ACL, le principe du moindre privilège, la gestion des certificats et secrets, l'audit, la supervision et la gouvernance d'entreprise.
Ce guide présente les différentes couches nécessaires pour protéger une architecture Kafka moderne et Event-Driven.
Lire le guide complet en français
💡 Whether you're a Java developer, Kafka engineer, backend developer, DevOps engineer or enterprise architect, understanding Kafka security is essential when designing production-grade event-driven systems.

https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/securite-kafka-ssl-sasl-acl-gouvernance.html

Alfresco Search Services Optimization: SOLR Indexing, Query Performance & Reindexing

shikha — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 03:30:00 +0000

As an Alfresco repository grows, search problems can become increasingly visible:

Newly uploaded documents take too long to appear in search
Full-text searches become slower
SOLR falls behind repository transactions
Reindexing takes hours or even days
JVM, disk or database utilization increases
Queries that worked well on smaller repositories become expensive

But optimizing Alfresco Search Services isn't simply about giving SOLR more memory.

Search performance is influenced by the complete processing chain:

Repository → Database → SOLR Trackers → Transformation → Index → Query → ACL Filtering

In my latest technical guide, I explore:

🔹 How Alfresco SOLR indexing works
🔹 Metadata, ACL and Content Tracking
🔹 Understanding Indexing Lag
🔹 Full-Text indexing and transformations
🔹 Query performance optimization
🔹 Wildcard and field-specific queries
🔹 JVM and filesystem-cache considerations
🔹 Disk I/O and storage performance
🔹 ACL impact on searches
🔹 Sharding for large repositories
🔹 When a full reindex is actually required
🔹 Reindexing large production repositories
🔹 Database and transformation impact during reindexing
🔹 Post-reindex validation
🔹 Production monitoring and troubleshooting

One important lesson

A search problem doesn't automatically mean:

“Delete the SOLR index and reindex everything.”

For large enterprise repositories, a full reindex can be an expensive operation.

Before rebuilding an index, investigate:

Indexing Lag → Trackers → Transformations → Custom Models → Permissions → JVM → Storage → Database → Network

Only then should reindexing become part of the recovery strategy.

Large Repository Reindexing

For large repositories, simply deleting the production index and rebuilding it can result in significant search downtime.

Where the supported architecture and available infrastructure permit it, a safer strategy can be:

Existing Search remains available → Build new index → Track/Reindex → Validate → Cut over

The objective isn't just to rebuild SOLR.

It's to rebuild it predictably, validate it properly and protect production search availability.

📖 Complete English guide:

https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/alfresco-search-services-solr-optimization.html

🇫🇷 Version française:

https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/optimisation-alfresco-search-services-solr.html

What has been the most challenging part of Alfresco Search in your environment — indexing lag, query performance, ACLs, reindexing or infrastructure sizing?

Event-Driven Microservices with Kafka & Spring Boot: Async Enterprise Integration

shikha — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 03:30:00 +0000

🚀 Event-Driven Microservices with Kafka & Spring Boot: Async Enterprise Integration

How can microservices communicate without creating tight synchronous dependencies?

In my latest technical guide, I explore how Apache Kafka + Spring Boot can be used to build scalable, loosely coupled, event-driven enterprise applications.

The article covers:

🔹 Event-Driven Architecture (EDA)
🔹 Kafka Producers & Consumers
🔹 Topics, Partitions & Consumer Groups
🔹 Asynchronous microservice communication
🔹 Event ordering & message keys
🔹 Idempotent consumers
🔹 Retry & Dead Letter Topics (DLT)
🔹 Transactional Outbox Pattern
🔹 Saga Pattern
🔹 Observability & security
🔹 Kafka vs synchronous REST communication

A key takeaway: adopting Kafka isn't simply about replacing REST with events.

A reliable event-driven architecture requires careful decisions around event contracts, partitioning, idempotency, failure recovery, transactional consistency and observability.

📖 Read the complete English guide:
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/event-driven-microservices-kafka-spring-boot_01069635397.html

🇫🇷 Version française:
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/microservices-event-driven-kafka-spring-boot.html

💬 How are you using Kafka in your architecture — event-driven microservices, data streaming, workflow integration, or asynchronous processing?

Originally published on Shikha Nirankari – Java, Spring Boot, Microservices, Kafka, BPM & Enterprise Architecture.

Alfresco Workflow Automation with Activiti BPMN: Enterprise Process Design

shikha — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:45:00 +0000

Enterprise Content Management becomes much more powerful when documents are connected to automated business processes.

A typical enterprise flow might look like:

Document → Review → Business Decision → Approval → Publish → Archive

In my latest technical guide, I explore how Alfresco and Activiti BPMN can be used to implement content-centric enterprise workflow automation.

The guide covers:

Alfresco workflow architecture
BPMN User Tasks and Service Tasks
Exclusive and Parallel Gateways
Document approval processes
Workflow Variables vs Alfresco Metadata
Task assignment and candidate groups
Timer Events and SLA escalation
Error and exception handling
REST API and enterprise integrations
Security and permissions
Audit and traceability
Reusable workflow design
Enterprise architecture best practices

A key architectural principle is to keep responsibilities separated:

Alfresco Content Services → Content

BPMN Workflow → Process Orchestration

Enterprise Services → Integration & Complex Business Logic

Read the complete technical guide:

English:
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/alfresco-workflow-automation-activiti-bpmn.html

French:
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/alfresco-workflow-activiti-bpmn-automatisation.html

Camunda vs Flowable vs jBPM: Which BPM and Workflow Engine Should You Choose?

shikha — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:30:00 +0000

⚙️ Camunda vs Flowable vs jBPM — which BPM engine?

🔵 Camunda → Orchestration
🟢 Flowable → Case Management
🟠 jBPM → Business Rules

Originally published on Learn IT with Shikha.

Read the original article and more enterprise technology tutorials:

EN: https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/camunda-vs-flowable-vs-jbpm.html

FR: https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/camunda-vs-flowable-vs-jbpm-comparatif.html

BPMN #Camunda

🚀 Kafka Performance Tuning: Producer, Consumer & Broker Optimization

shikha — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:45:00 +0000

Kafka can handle enormous event volumes, but achieving consistent production performance requires tuning the complete pipeline—not just a single configuration property.

My latest guide covers:

Producer batching, linger.ms, compression and acknowledgements
Consumer fetch settings and lag optimization
Partition planning and consumer parallelism
Broker disk, network and thread considerations
Replication and durability
Throughput vs latency trade-offs
Kafka monitoring metrics
A practical production tuning checklist

The core approach:

Measure → Identify Bottleneck → Tune → Benchmark → Monitor

Full technical guide:
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/kafka-performance-tuning-guide.html

French version:
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/optimisation-performance-kafka.html

kafka #apachekafka #microservices #eventdriven #java

Event-Driven Microservices with Kafka & Spring Boot: Async Enterprise Integration Guide

shikha — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 04:30:00 +0000

Modern microservices shouldn't depend entirely on synchronous REST calls.

In this guide, I explore how Apache Kafka and Spring Boot can be used to build scalable, loosely coupled, event-driven microservices for enterprise applications.

You'll learn about:

⚡ Event-driven architecture
📨 Kafka producers and consumers
🔄 Asynchronous microservice communication
🏗️ Loose coupling and scalability
☕ Spring Boot + Kafka integration
🛡️ Reliability and enterprise integration patterns

Read the complete guide:

🇬🇧 English
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/event-driven-microservices-kafka-spring-boot.html

🇫🇷 Français
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/microservices-evenementiels-kafka-spring-boot.html

If you're building Java microservices, I'd be interested to hear how you're using Kafka in your architecture.

🔐 Alfresco Authentication & SSO Integration: LDAP, SAML & Keycloak

shikha — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Enterprise Alfresco environments often need more than basic username/password authentication.

In my latest technical guide, I explore how Alfresco Content Services can fit into an enterprise identity and SSO architecture using:

• LDAP / Active Directory
• SAML-based authentication
• Keycloak
• Single Sign-On (SSO)
• Enterprise Identity & Access Management
• Authentication flow and integration considerations

The article also looks at when LDAP authentication is sufficient and when an Identity Provider and SSO architecture becomes a better fit.

If you're working with Alfresco administration, architecture, upgrades or enterprise integrations, this should provide a useful starting point.

📖 Full technical guide:
https://shikhanirankari.blogspot.com/2026/08/alfresco-authentication-sso-ldap-saml-keycloak.html

I’d be interested to hear what authentication architecture you're using with Alfresco — LDAP/AD, SAML, Keycloak or another IdP?