I’ve tagged and released a new version of cmislib, the Python CMIS client library. What’s cool about this release is that it is the first one known to work with more than one CMIS provider. Yea for interoperability! The beauty of CMIS, realized! Okay, it wasn’t that beautiful, it’s still “0.1”, and there are known issues. But I can now say the library works with both Alfresco and IBM FileNet and that’s a Good Thing.

IBM was a big help with this. Al Brown, one of the CMIS spec leads turned one of his colleagues, Jay Brown, onto cmislib. Jay called me up and asked, “If I give you access to a FileNet P8 server, can you test cmislib against it?” I was on it faster than you could say, “unittest.main()”.

I think the effort was valuable for all sides. Our little “mini plugfest” turned up issues in my client as well as both CMIS providers. Jay worked hard to chase down everything on the FileNet side. Dave Caruana chased a few down on the Alfresco side as well. Thanks to everyone for the team effort.

Anyway, give the new cmislib release a try and give me your feedback. If you want a feel for how easy it can be to work with CMIS repositories using the cmislib API, check out the documentation or dive right in. Installation is as easy as “easy_install cmislib” (easy_install instructions).

Next up is Nuxeo. Can the open source ECM vendor achieve cmislib Unit Test Greatness faster than Big Blue? We shall see!