XWiki Enterprise Vs Platform: what is the difference between them??

From a message sent by Sergiu Dumitriu to XWiki Users email list [users@xwiki.org] on 23 March 2012, 05:11

The platform is all that can be found in http://maven.xwiki.org/releases/org/xwiki/platform/

There is no "final" package that one can install to get the "XWiki Platform" running. The platform consists of all the different modules that are developed by the XWiki community and included by the committers in the official repository. The real outcome of the platform is this collection of modules that can be combined together to make useful applications. Each module serves a different purpose and brings one or more features to the "XWiki Platform offering".

XWiki Enterprise is just a way to group some platform modules, in order to get a usable product. All the built packages available under http://maven.xwiki.org/releases/org/xwiki/enterprise/ are XE, even if they don't include the default set of documents (the Enterprise XAR).

All the features of XWiki Enterprise are actually features provided by the platform. But the platform provides more feature than what XE includes. For example, the IRC application allows a wiki to connect to an IRC channel and communicate in both ways: log in the wiki what happens on IRC, and notify in the IRC of what happens in the wiki. But this application isn't included in XWiki Enterprise, since it's too specific and doesn't match the goal of the XE distribution.