Back on July 12, X-Hive was acquired by EMC. At the time, I did a quick glance and was a little confused. I started wondering why they made the acquisition. This was worrisome as I hadn’t had that thought in years about any acquisition in the ECM industry. Maybe the new leadership of the Documentum unit didn’t have the same touch as those recently departed. After all, Documentum has traditionally worked with XML better than any of their major competitors. Even after a few weeks, I wasn’t the only one trying to figure this out. This acquisition seemed to be either an admission of weakness or a purely anti-competitive play. Then I learned some more.
Taxonomies, Good, Bad, or Ugly?
Sumanth Molakala posted a great look at determining the amount of effort that should go into creating a taxonomy for a new Enterprise Content Management solution. This brings up a debate that I have had/observed among ECM professionals for years. Do we make Search the primary access method, or the second? I find that every professional has a leaning, and I have yet to find a solid predictor for any practitioners’ preference.
I prefer a good hierarchy, while Sumanth appears to favor searching. I find that the creation of a hierarchy helps me organize my thoughts and determine what is important about any given piece of content. Also, while Google may be trying to take the world over via the Internet, most users are more intimate with their old-fashioned network file structures. The ability to browse to a piece of content adds to user acceptance of their first Document Management application. Over time, many users transition into Search-first users. Until that happens and ECM becomes transparent, I believe that a good taxonomy is important.
Comparing Features of SharePoint and eRoom
I have had access to a SharePoint installation for some time. I had promised readers of Ask Johnny! that I would do a more thorough comparison of eRoom and SharePoint a while back. I’ve had a chance to play with it some in order to form an initial impression of its capabilities. What follows is a comparison of the out-of-the-box functionality of eRoom and SharePoint.
Disclaimers: I have been working with eRoom for years, so have a natural bias. I am also still learning SharePoint, so I am sure I’ve missed some things. My client environment is a fully patched IE 6 running on Windows XP Professional with Office 2003 Professional. I also only had administrator rights to my site, not the installation as a whole.
Redefining Enterprise Content Management
Several months ago, Russ Stalter posted on how he was Disillusioned with the Current Definition of ECM. Russ provides a new definition for ECM, which I believe is better, but still suffers some of the same deficiencies of the current definitions. Tower Software picked up on the thread, deriding the box-checking definitions out there.
Single Sign-On, SAML, and Authentication in Documentum
I’ve been meaning to get back to this topic for quite some time. Before moving onto other Standards topics, I want to try and conclude this thread on SAML. James and I traded responses about authentication and SAML, and I applaud James for taking time to look into the capabilities of the DFC to respond to my previous post. James did get several details of the DFC incorrect, but not regarding any points important to this discussion.
Fun with EMC Support Forum Titles
I was reading a post on the EMC Support Forums, and I started thinking about the amount of time the average responder has spent on the forums over the years. Every responder at this point (aside from myself) has “Grand Master” status on the Support forums. I started thinking about the status rankings and decided to list a more humorous interpretation of the rankings.
Tips: Forcing an LDAP Update in Documentum
I ran into a problem the other day and I thought I would share the solution. I have encountered it before elsewhere, and that means others have encountered it before as well. Before I dive into the problem, I just want to say something to James. When Bex wrote about ECM systems storing Content, not Users, he presents a powerful and logical argument. Outside of the lab, I’ve had several clients where the network wasn’t ideal, and we were more than happy to store a copy of the user information inside of Documentum, only talking LDAP for authentication. I know the solution should be to fix the network, but sometimes that isn’t entirely possible. That is another story.
[REVISED 2007-8-03 (I hate this network)]
One More Month for D6?
I have now heard from multiple sources that D6 is about a month out. I have even heard rumors, stress rumors, that it may trip over into September. While I am saddened by this, I would rather wait another month for a solid product than have something that I can’t use show up on my doorstop, wasting my time.
If I hear anything to the contrary, or anything else related, I’ll share. This is, of course, unofficial and it could be out tomorrow.
I’m just not holding my breath.
D6 is Coming!
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.
A Timely Example of Needed ECM Standards
So the question has gone up repeatedly since this dialog began, what problems are we trying to solve? I’ve tried to explain this and I think I’ve been getting through. However, I still encounter pain in real life because of this. In fact, this just may be a punishment for raising such a ruckus.
Here is my most recent problem. A client has a legacy Records Management solution. It works well, though is a little dated. The client is now going to implement a Web Content Management solution. The approved web pages need to be automatically declared as a record. If these were the same ECM platform, there wouldn’t be any problem. However, they aren’t. In fact, one is Microsoft based and the other is Java based. Neither of them is Documentum, though that wouldn’t change the problem significantly.
Word of Pie 