Old Documentum Architecture Habits are Hard to Break

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A while back, John Kominetz wrote a nice post on The Elephant and the Blind Man. I’ve been checking John out for a while and been looking for an excuse to link to his stuff for a while, but I always get sidetracked. Aside from his fun habit to reference Douglas Adams, he has been working with Documentum for a very long time. He has developed a healthy skepticism about the product.

In his post on the Elephant, John talks about the load of Junk DNA in Documentum. As the product has evolved over the last 15 years, things have been left behind and other things that worked, haven’t evolved. My recent post on the Audit Trail has led to a couple of posts addressing both of these aspects.

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2008 EMC Federal Forum

This is probably short notice, but I wanted to let everyone know that I plan on being at the EMC Federal Forum on Tuesday, July 15th. It is a little event for those federal customers that couldn’t make it out to Las Vegas due to federal travel restrictions.

If you already attending or speaking at the forum, let me know and I’ll look out for you.

While I don’t plan on blogging this event like I did EMC World, I will be keeping my eyes and ears open for any fun news to share with everyone. I’m hoping to chat with a few speakers, including Mark Lewis, and get an update on the D6.5 release date.

Tips: Taming the Documentum Audit Trail

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The Documentum Audit Trail. It is one of the un-tamed beasts in many Documentum deployments. The requirements for auditing often come into conflict with the reality of the out-of-the-box functionality. To makes things useful for the average user, organizations tend to set earlier than desired audit purges and/or severely restrict what they audit which can lead to important actions being overlooked.

On the other hand, keeping everything makes finding what you want an expensive proposition.

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Enterprise 2.0 Versus Reality

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I was reading a post from James on implementing some Social Networking tools within a large Enterprise, Even more untold perspectives on social networking within large enterprises. It was an interesting post as it reflected, from a different angle, an issue that I have had to deal with recently.

My basic challenge is simple. A company decided that they needed to consolidate their knowledge (their word) and implement ways to both expand and re-purpose their information. I’m thinking Enterprise 2.0=Knowledge Management. I’m thinking cool new technologies. I’m getting all excited.

Then during a requirements session I hear, What is a Wiki?

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The ECM Community Meets Web 2.0

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In the last month, two different social networking communities have popped-up in the ECM space. One is the new Information Zen community sponsored by AIIM. The other is The Content Management Connection created by George Dearing. There are lots of pros and cons, but lets keep it simple…

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Global Piece of Pie

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Thanks to the Big Men, I have added a new, somewhat interesting, feature to the Word of Pie. It is a map showing where readers are located. This new map, over on the right, is a little feature of ClustrMaps and is providing me with lots of fun data. If you click on it, you’ll be taken to a larger view.

After almost a week, I have learned this much:

  • I have readers on every continent except Antarctica.
  • My southern-most readers are in Chile, South Africa, and New Zealand (the winner I think)
  • Outside of the US, the most hits in a country are the UK, India, and a few other countries in Western Europe hidden under the large red dots.
  • Most surprising location? Central China (Yinchuan?) Cape Town in South Africa and Mashhad(?), Iran were close seconds.
  • Most surprising non-hit? Ireland. Only after looking at the European coverage did it stick out.

Going to reset the map occasionally, though I am not sure how often. It is going to be a little toy for a while.

ECM, SOA, and Bees

I am glad that Billy responded to my earlier post critiquing his article for AIIM. I meant it to be constructive, and I wanted it to lead to further discussion. It was a difficult post for me to write because I respect Billy and didn’t want to alienate him. It seems he gave me the benefit of the doubt, at least in print, and for that Billy, I thank you.

The funny thing was that when I read the name of his post, Poking the Bee Hive, I was watching a Dr Who episode featuring a giant wasp. Weird stuff.

I’m going to bypass the editorial stuff discussion for the most part. That is a matter of opinion and Billy had a co-author and editorial staff to answer to when writing the article. Like Billy, I want to focus on the intersection of Enterprise 2.0, SOA, and ECM. That is the meat of his article and the part that can actually lead to greater understanding on everyone’s part.

So while I wait for Billy to start his side of the discussion, I will poke the bee’s nest some more.

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COBOL…Still Alive?

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So a couple of posts by James the other day caught my attention. He addresses the still widespread use of COBOL in many enterprises and how it, not the mainframe running it, is a source of evil.

Before I comment, a little background.

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SharePoint and Documentum, Patience is a Virtue

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Well, the time has come to talk about the elephant in the room, SharePoint.  It was a slow conference for me regarding SharePoint.  I didn’t attend any normal sessions on it as I was usually being pulled away by other items.  I did get a lot of time with Andrew, Erin, Craig (yes, Craig), and a boatload of partners talking about the SharePoint problem.

Problem?  Yes, problem.  The problem is that nobody knows what to do to make everyone play together.  I’ll tell you right now, playing together is required.

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Billy Cripe on ECM and SOA

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I had two thoughts competing for my next topic. It being late in the day, I decided to pick the one that would be the easiest to write as all I had to do was read an article by someone with whom I typically agree and compose a simple post.

I chose poorly…

Billy Cripe has just had an article published in the May/June edition of AIIM E-DOC. I was excited. I usually see one or two articles in each issue that catch my interest, but I am always underwhelmed by the content. I wasn’t this time, I was just disappointed.

It All Falls Apart

I want to start with the simple disclaimer. I respect Billy and I firmly believe that we have the same vision of ECM 2.0 and where it is going. He always has seemed to have a firm grasp on all the relevant technologies. That didn’t really change after reading his article. I am disappointed in the way he delivered the message.

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