Chapter 7. Wrapping Up

7.1. Future directions
7.2. Getting involved

This document provides a very high-level overview of ModeShape, introducing you to some basic concepts and showing what would be required to use ModeShape in your own application. We saw two simple examples that showed two different aspects of ModeShape: the sequencing system and the connector system. Each of these examples showed how to create a ModeShape configuration, how to start up the ModeShape engine, and how to then access a javax.jcr.Repository instance, and after that your application just uses the standard JCR API.

For a more in-depth description of ModeShape and the internal workings, see our Reference Guide. This also describes how to write your own custom sequencers or connectors. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact ModeShape's user mailing list, use our discussion forums, or chat with the developers in the IRC chat room. If you find a bug or have a suggestion, please let us know or (better yet) create a new issue in the project's JIRA issue management system . If there's something in particular you're interested in, talk with the community - there may be others interested in the same thing.

7.1. Future directions

With version 2.0.0.Final, ModeShape introduces support for the JCR 2.0 API, improvements to existing connectors, and quite a few bug fixes and improvements.

This means that ModeShape now implements all of the required JCR 2.0 features: repository acquisition, authentication, reading/navigating, query, export, node type discovery, and permissions and capability checking. ModeShape also implements most of the optional JCR 2.0 features: writing, import, observation, workspace management, versioning, locking, node type management, same-name siblings, and orderable child nodes. The remaining optional features (shareable nodes, access control management, lifecycle management, retention and hold, and transactions) may be introduced in future versions.

We also plan to add support for clustering multiple ModeShape engines spread across multiple JVM processes. And each expect to introduce more connectors and sequencers to our library. Other items on our long-term roadmap include a web user interface, Seam integration, and integration with even more kinds of information systems and repositories.

7.2. Getting involved

If you're interested in getting involved with the ModeShape project, take a look at our community pages, and consider picking up one of the sequencers or connectors on our roadmap. Or, check out JIRA for the list of features we've thought of. If you think of one that's not there, please add it to JIRA!