Comments on: Content-Enabled Applications in the Age of CMIS http://wordofpie.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/ Ponderings on Life, the Universe, and Information Fri, 25 May 2012 11:29:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: craigrandall http://wordofpie.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3919 Fri, 01 May 2009 20:29:51 +0000 http://wordofpie.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3919 Posted (part 1): http://craigrandall.net/archives/2009/05/content-enabled-apps-empathized/

]]> By: craigrandall http://wordofpie.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3915 Fri, 01 May 2009 04:10:58 +0000 http://wordofpie.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3915 Apparently, OT thinks so, Jed. (Nice Content Day post, BTW.) See slide 5 (of 7) here: http://www.slideshare.net/keepthebyte/cmis-plugfest-april-2009-screenshots?type=powerpoint.

Pie, I’m working on a follow-up post, which I hope to publish tomorrow…

]]> By: Pie http://wordofpie.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3911 Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:39:27 +0000 http://wordofpie.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3911 You are right about the standards already around BPM. I view CMIS as a way for BPM tools to reach out to ECM systems. The BPM standards, like BPEL, are for the reverse, for ECM systems to reach out to the BPM system.

As for your question, I’m not sure. I do know that there is a market for the fat client. Those things were starting to work quite well when the Web began the hostile takeover of the ECM UI world. The key to widespread success on the Enterprise level for that UI would be making it mind-numbingly easy for large organizations to deploy.

]]> By: Jed http://wordofpie.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3910 Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:54:26 +0000 http://wordofpie.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3910 I can see where all the major search vendors should jump into CMIS, but I think Lee’s comment ref the BPM vendors is an interesting one. There are plenty of standards in the BPM space, but with the abstraction of the CMIS layer, why would’nt they want to take advantage of it.

See my latest posting ref OpenText Content Day, I found it quite surprising that OpenText had developed a fat client that connects to LiveLink, eDocs AND Sharepoint. I guess the fat client route is because thats what eDoc’s users are comfortable with. So if you dont mind managing the client side infrastructure of fat clients, do OpenText, a CMIS supporter, have a big future selling a content management fat client that connects to any repository at all via CMIS ????

]]> By: Chris http://wordofpie.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3909 Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:10:47 +0000 http://wordofpie.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3909 Thanks for the reply Pie!

I agree. There are a lot of factors to consider when developing an app like you say; and if you are not experienced doing it 2 months is a short time. What’s interesting on that point though is that I’m seeing our client projects average around 2-3 months in length so I think the design/development/system testing effort is possible in that time frame. But of course we can’t forget to include that requirements definition, user testing, and deployment tack on additional time.

]]> By: Chris http://wordofpie.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3908 Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:56:28 +0000 http://wordofpie.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3908 Definitely. I worked on a project for a client a couple years ago that used Pega and Documentum for case management. It’s had a huge impact on the business. Essentially, the data in the BPM system is used to launch a custom client that displays the case information stored in Documentum. it’s nice, simple, and effective.

]]> By: Pie http://wordofpie.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3907 Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:48:10 +0000 http://wordofpie.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3907 Great thoughts. I’m with you all the way here. The questions were more for the audience at EMC World that are developing applications in general, maybe just for their company, not necessarily for re-sale. Developing an application for sale as a product is quite different than creating one for a specific solution for a specific client. I want people to look at the differences, which these questions highlight, and think accordingly.

I managed the AnnoDoc product way back and we architected it to work with Documentum and IBM’s Content Manager. Adding Content Manager was challenging because the product was originally from a consulting gig and the answers to those 3 questions were No at the time. We went and abstracted the data layer. It wasn’t difficult or confusing, but it took time to do it correctly. We did have more code to manage, but it was isolated and worth it at the time.

As for “proper development process,” that was for developing a front-end application mostly from scratch versus modifying something that exists. They take vastly different amounts of time. If I have 2 months, I’m probably going to modify something that exists. If I have 12 months, making a custom app might be a possibility. Obviously a lot rides on the complexity of the requirements and the resources on-hand. A “proper development process” is dependent on what you are trying to accomplish. So the point of the third question was that if you don’t have a lot of time, you’re going to be modifying something and not building something.

]]> By: Chris http://wordofpie.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3906 Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:43:32 +0000 http://wordofpie.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3906 I think answering these three questions is not as difficult as it seems.

You ask…
Am I ever going to move this to a new back-end?

If you are truly writing a Content-enabled application, you likely have several back-ends. In fact, you may be pulling archived content from one system and more active content from another. It is a best-practice to build an abstraction layer for data-access to isolate your front-end app from the data. Ideally, this means any back-end changes only need to be addressed in the data abstraction layer. This may sound difficult and confusing, but the company I work for has implemented it several times with a set of web serverices or a code library. All with positive results. It is also the easiest way to isolate the front-end app developers from having to know the nuances of the back-end API.

Do I want to package the solution for another deployment?

In the time of being green and reusing application components you should definitely be considering which parts, if not all, of your app can be repurposed. Perhaps its by different departments, business units, or a globally distributed app. If you build a successful application the business will undoubtedly find other ways to use parts of it. So build it with configurability in mind.

Do I have time and resources for a proper development process?

I sure hope so. It seems everyone has time to do things over but never the time to do it right in the first place. If you can’t build a solid app to deliver you might as well get out of the business. There are a ton of methodologies that one can follow to build solid solutions without spending a lot of time and money. And anyway – what do you mean by a proper dev process???

Thanks for the thoughts.

]]> By: Lee Smith http://wordofpie.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3903 Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:33:47 +0000 http://wordofpie.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/content-enabled-applications-in-the-age-of-cmis/#comment-3903 Nice post Pie. I wonder if we’ll see the BPM products such as Pega starting to see their opportunity more here. After all the business value is not gained from having a content repository per se but more from the improvements in processing and the improvements in information visibility. Yes unstructured content is common within Case Management but there is also a need to bring this information together with structured information on the Case. By having the integration with the content repository standardised the BPM players could start to provide the front end and processing and not have to worry about the repository where the contracts, for example, are held. This could lead to an interesting development in the ECM industry where the products become a support service for the main application, thus moving them down the value chain somewhat, but it would increase sales opportunities for the products as they can be used to support more and more verticals.

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