Ok, so I’ve been playing with Brix, a CMS toolkit from the creators of Apache Wicket that uses Apache Jackrabbit as its content repository.
And it rules.
Jackrabbit (a JCR implementation, i.e. a hierarchical repository for all sorts of content) is maturing fast, with 1.5.0 hot off the presses. It’s performance is really quite good in my simple tests (most page loads creating just one highly optimised database hit).
Wicket is also about to take a great leap, thanks to 1.4’s generics helping everyone keep their code type-safe.
Brix’s own architecture is fascinating. It currently has a very simple GUI, but don’t let that fool you – there’s a lot of hidden power underneath, and the code is very clean and well-factored (if under-commented in parts…)
The combo is a winner, so I’m actually switching the bulk of my own CMS over to Brix as of today. Lots of work, but I get the feeling it’ll all be worthwhile.