In order to install the code you need to register your interest, with a real email address. The password will then be emailed to you. The purpose of this is simply to keep a record of who has downloaded the code so that we can keep a record of the interest on APLAWS. You will be under no obligations if you complete this form, nor will you need to join a mailing list, unless you would like to. Go directly to the registration form.
APLAWS+ is the name of the "bundle" of software that forms the APLAWS+ Content Management System. The "+" simply indicates that is has been part of a major reworking and could easily have been a new release version number.
The main difference are the changes that have been made as part of the LAWs National Project. The main visible difference is the improved back-end authoring process, which is far easier and more functional with the new release. In addition the system has improved XML, which essentially means that any existing APLAWS XSL templates need to be re-written in the move towards an APLAWS+ upgrade - this unfortunate upgrade requirement was necessary to improve the code overall, so that the XML was easier to work with for typical web teams. One of the best improvements of the APLAWS+ code is that it allows for easier packaging and sharing of content types - this was not easily possible with the previous codebase.
As at March 2004 some work has been done migrating from APLAWS to the new APLAWS+ code (e.g. London Borough of Camden). The major issue is the "state" of the data within the complexities of the Content Management System's various options, e.g. if you have content that is considerably devolved, has security restrictions and is assigned to a complex workflow then it will be more difficult to migrate than content assigned to a single user with a one-step workflow.
Nevertheless, the new APLAWS+ "Bulk Uploader" functionality allows for the import of XML content against a specific schema, so the data itself should be able to be imported quite easily. For those that want to keep complex states within this data, there are suppliers that will be able to undertake this work. The more complex the configuration, the more complex the migration scripts - and therefore the higher the cost.
It may well be an approach that upgrading to a new system allows a fresh look at the content and it is used as an opportunity to alter where content was and review the "state" the content was in.
A support contract is not required for APLAWS+. A support contract is a matter of choice on whether a technology partner is required to provide services on demand around the product. Many suppliers provide and offer services around APLAWS+, but, as an open source product, the choice of how to mix an match is an individual one.
Any hardware that can run the recommended environments:
Yes. There are several authorities using APLAWS as an intranet. The main issue revolves around having a clear policy on document management and making decisions around a well integrated solution, APLAWS, after all, is designed as a web content management system.
There are no killer reasons to switch to using XHTML instead of HTML at this time. Indeed it would lower accessibility of APLAWS since browser support for XHTML is considerably worse than that for traditional HTML. An article on http://www.alistapart.com/articles/xhtml, A List Apart provides more information. If after reading this, you did still want to generate XHTML, it would be a simple matter to change the xsl:output tags in the XSL templates used for presenting APLAWS:
The main PostgreSQL project plans to add support for a native Windows version with our 7.5 or 8.0 release. This will probably be released in early 2004, with that time estimate being based on 7.4 being due for release near the end of 2003. The free option at present is to use PostgreSQL running through Cygwin* That being all said and done however, we don't recommend using the cygwin version of PostgreSQL for "Production" quality databases, nor high load levels. http://techdocs.postgresql.org/guides/Windows
The biggest issue around good open source databases should be how they stack up against proprietary databases, such as Oracle. That's the real debate. Nevertheless, specifically for APLAWS+, MySQL doesn't support nested select statements, stored procedures & unions all of which are very heavily used in CCM