Taking a break from D6 to observe and rant about Documentum’s recent changes. They announced, buried in another press release, Thursday that Mark Lewis is taking over the Content Management and Archiving group and being presented with the title of President. I am mixed on this move as he replaces Mike DeCesare, one of the guys that helped Documentum grow. Of course, he was a sales guy, and Mark Lewis, the former head of Legato [Edit – 7 Sept 2007: He has been the Chief Development Officer and came from HP], is more technically savvy and may be a better choice to lead the CMA.
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D6 Observations, Part I
This is a first of a sequence of posts of things that I notice as I downloaded the new release last night.
- Time to stop putting off those upgrades. D6 doesn’t support SQL Server 2000 any more. Your development boxes need to be upgraded as well since Windows 2000 is officially on the scrap pile. In general, not a lot of supported platforms. Upgrading your Content Server to 5.3 sp5 as an intermediate step in order to upgrade all your 3rd party components may have just gone from being a good idea to a required step.
- Content Server still C++ has for the application. Fabian was correct. The DMCL API, the old C++ foundation for all applications, is now part of the Java DFC. A copy of the DMCL will still be provided for legacy support, but no new features are to be provided.
D6 is on the Download Site
Have fun.
Documentum Release Details for the Uninitiated
In my previous post, I mentioned that D6 was shipping. I then added a few notes. After reading a comment from James on his links for September 1, I decided to add a few details and explain some things for those unfamiliar with D6 and Documentum’s release practices.
First Client Ship for D6
I have been told that FCS for D6 was yesterday. At last check it was not on the download site. Expect that in the next week or so as it always lags a bit. Three items of note…
- TaskSpace is coming in October. I’ve heard a couple of concerns around stability on the new interface and they seem to be waiting to get it right. Smart move.
- File Share Services is delayed until Q4. Haven’t heard anything about the why, but I’m not overly concerned. As this is used for desktop interactions, this shouldn’t slow people down much. By the time most upgrade plans are in place and getting ready for Test, this should hopefully be out. I’ve only needed it once over my career, so I don’t think the impact is massive.
- No sizing spreadsheet for D6 yet. However, expect about 25% more load on the Content Server. What exactly is meant by that, I’m not sure. I would assume both RAM and processor. Indexing should be the same as 5.3. No hints on the Application Server as of yet.
So if you need it, find your local EMC rep and tell them you can’t wait for the download site. I’m going to give them a week before I start bothering them. Realistically, not that much spare time to make it worth the effort until then. All of my precious spare time this weekend is devoted to this week’s game.
Enjoy your Labor Day.
Tips: Fixing LDAP Group Membership
Many of you probably saw my last post on LDAP. It was about forcing a synchronization of LDAP back to a specific date. My basic problem was that a small subset of users were being dropped from one of the LDAP groups within Documentum. We had removed and then added them again, and the re-synch seemed to work. A few days later, they were gone. The question was why?
Why Trust is Important
Recently, two events have made me reflect on why trust is important. These weren’t unique or exciting events, and they weren’t related. Their close proximity in time made me remember how important trust is and why I should not be carefree with it in my professional life.
And now, folks, it’s time for “Who do you trust!” Hubba, hubba, hubba! Money, money, money! Who do you trust? Me? I’m giving away free money.
– The Joker, Batman
The ECM WSDL Discussion Leading to More
Tell everyone that you aren’t going to have time to write many entries and people start blogging about cool and interesting topics. Here is a quick rundown of the ECM WSDL analysis and my thoughts.
- Our old buddy James McGovern started the whole thing off. He has apparently been sharing is frustration with his significant other and he wrote a post on the sad state of WSDLs in the ECM space. They are ugly and poorly written in his experience. Not having delved into any out of the box WSDLs in ECM, I can hardly argue. It wouldn’t shock me though. Hopefully the DFS ones will measure up better. James then starts to talk about the ECM systems having a standard Document Query Language and a common WSDL built upon that structure. Sounds good to me. In fact, it is a nice, positive contribution to the whole ECM standards issue.
Fitting SharePoint into the ECM Picture
Previously I compared eRoom and SharePoint. I noted several basic features, but didn’t really say that either was dramatically better than the other. They are both solid collaboration options. That is the key here. SharePoint measures up well to eRoom because they are both the same thing. They are Content Rich Applications that focus on Collaboration. They are not ECM solutions. eRoom admits it. SharePoint doesn’t.
SharePoint doesn’t appear to deliver on its promises with its out-of-the-box functionality. As was predicted and then observed, SharePoint requires multiple third party components and other customizations to achieve its true potential. The core problem that comes from this approach is managing components from multiple sources.
Tips: Contentless Objects as Lookups, Even Less than Content
So the other day I was looking at why one of the lookups in my system was always providing me a blank value. The keyword DISTINCT seemed to keep it down to one, but it didn’t do more than limit the amount of blanks to one. It is a required field, so the user can’t save it with that value, but even with a valid default value, it is something that annoys me. So I began trying to banish it from my sight.
Word of Pie 