[NGO] Re: NGO Digest, Vol 3, Issue 4

[Donald A. Lobo]

CiviCRM started with the help of two other
organizations  (CivicSpace and CivicActions) that were
committed to Drupal, hence the choice of Drupal as out
first CMS platform (which is retrospect was a nice
choice). In addition a fair number of other drupal
developers and technology providers gave us feedback
during the initial design and development stage. The
Drupal/Joomla community have helped with the
documentation in the form of cookbooks/recipes etc,
however they have also been willing alpha/beta testers
that have worked closely with us as the API's have
evolved (for the better)

With Joomla, it was a similar story. We had PicNet who
lent us some joomla expertise that enabled us to wrap
up the joomla port fairly quickly (we currently
release joomla and drupal versions simultaneously)

In that sense, i dont see it as a chicken and egg
problem (though even this problem seems to have been
solved:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/05/26/chicken.egg/
). If we have a one/two organizations who are willing
to experiment and learn with us (and commit a few
developer resources), we will be happy to to figure
out how to get a Plone compatible solution up
relatively quickly. 

On the other hand if people want a "built and
documented platform-agnostic API", i suspect it will
have to wait for a wee bit more time since its not a
high priority for our current user base.

lobo

--- Jon Stahl <jon at onenw.org> wrote:

> 
> On Jul 2, 2006, at 3:29 PM, David Geilhufe wrote:
> 
> >
> > One note about "service" integration... CiviCRM
> will provide a stable 
> > service-- probably SOAP-- when there is a demand
> for it... right now 
> > Plone would be the first demand for it. If folks
> started to work on 
> > Plone/CiviCRM integration, they can expect the
> stable service to be a 
> > change the CiviCRM team would make to accommodate
> the integration. But 
> > first someone needs to work on it.
> >
> 
> So, it seems like something of a chicken-and-egg
> problem.  :-)
> 
> I'm no developer, but I can't understand how anyone
> in the Plone 
> community could start working on an integration
> module to an API that 
> doesn't exist and isn't documented.
> 
> IMHO, CiviCRM needs to meet non-PHP platforms (such
> as Plone) halfway 
> by building and documenting a platform-agnostic
> service-based API 
> (SOAP, REST, whatever).
> 
> Did the Drupal/Joomla -> CiviCRM integration work
> begin before there 
> was a documented PHP API they could plan against? 
> If so, what were 
> their first steps?    Maybe we can learn from that
> experience.
> 
> 
> best,
> jon
> 
> 
> 
> Jon Stahl, Program Manager
> ONE/Northwest - Online Networking for the
> Environment
> jon at onenw.org
> skype: jonstahl  y!: jondstahl
> 206.286.1235x15
> 
> http://www.onenw.org
> http://blogs.onenw.org/jon
> 
> 
> 
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