Been slowing down a bit as I focus on several work and family activities that have precluded me from writing many entries. However, today I saw something in the Documentum Developer Site News feed on the side of my blog. EMC is gearing up for the release of D6 and I am starting to get excited. I’m not the only one if the hits on my blog are any indication.

D6 in the News

Okay, so maybe not the news, but EMC did release a press release announcing D6 today. It wasn’t real news as the announced release date has been tomorrow, [UPDATE: As I’ve stated in a subsequent post, the release is more likely around Labor Day] but it was exciting. Without a major industry event taking place this week, the timing of the release basically means that D6 should be released on time. The downloading can hopefully start by the end of the week and we can all start playing with it.

To add to the level of interest, the new first Developer Challenge is going to be the creation of a D6 Web Services application using DFS. BEA is going to be providing $100,000 in prize money and all the licenses for supporting software. It seems that they are going to have a VMWare image that every entrant will need to utilize as a baseline for their entry.

Pretty excited about the competition. Not sure if I and my team will have the spare time to put an entry together, but I think it is a great and innovative way to get people to try the new platform out quickly.

D6 Showing up Everywhere

Prior to the news today, a few more things were keeping D6 high on my radar. First was this note at CMS Watch. It discusses how the ECM market has changed and that the release of D6 won’t provide the boost to EMC that a major release used to provide an ECM vendor. It is worth a read, and CMS Watch is worth monitoring if you are any sort of ECM Architect or functional expert.

Then came this blog entry on an Alfresco themed blog with no readily identifiable author. However, the author, while pro-Alfresco, does seen to be relatively open-minded when discussing Documentum. In the post, the author does an excellent job of discussing the use of Aspects as well as cautioning as to their over-use.

The risk of overusing Aspects has been the subject of discussions the past couple of months whenever one of us begins to drool over the prospect of utilizing them to solve our latest problem. We think of different ways of solving our problem, and if we can’t think of one, we return to thinking of using Aspects. Now if only D6 sp1 was coming out this week so that we could confidently begin putting it out into production.

The blog entry does ask one question, I am wondering if there are plans to refactor the existing organization of types. The simple answer is Yes and No. The last conversation I had on the topic mentioned them introducing a Lightweight SysObject in Documentum 6.5. This was going to be implemented through the use of Aspects. Items that already existed will still be full-sized objects. In addition, any object that is lightweight can be transformed into a full-sized object if additional functionality is needed. That release is about a year away, so I am going to stop talking about it as the next EMC World is scheduled around that time period. More accurate and up-to-date information will be available then. It was explained to me and I understand it, but I don’t want to take the risk, more than I already have, of confusing my readers. Plus, a lot of things can change in a year.

EMC Standards Note Regarding D6

So, I am browsing through an EMC World 2007 presentation while writing this entry and I saw this bullet in the Documentum Architecture presentation on a Future slide, REST support. That is a positive sign. Nothing in my notes that says which release, but it is at least sp1, if not further out. Nice to see it listed though.

The last time I looked at the presentation, I didn’t know what REST was. A lot can change in two months.