PUBLIC MARKS with tags jsr170 & api

There are several approaches that I could take when discussing the JCR. In this article, I examine the features offered by the JSR-170 specification from a developer's perspective, focusing on the available API and the interfaces that allow a programmer to efficiently use the JSR-170 repository in designing a content application. As an artificial example, I'll implement a trivial back end for a Wikipedia-like encyclopedia system, called JCRWiki, with support for binary content, versioning, backup, and search. I use Apache Jackrabbit, an open source implementation of JSR-170, to develop this application.

It is extremely common for applications to store various pieces of information, most of the time in relational databases. While they do a great job when working with regular data types, they are not very efficient when dealing with binary data, for example images or documents. File systems can be used as an alternative and while they offer better performance, there is neither a query language for searching information nor a notion of relationship or transaction.