Why ECM Standards?

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There has been a lot of new discussion on ECM Standards of late. I’m pretty excited about it. I don’t agree with it all, but discussion is good. I can’t respond to everything in one post. Well, I can, but that will take a lot of time. So I am going to respond to lowest level observation. When I say “lowest level”, I mean that if you don’t buy into this detail, the rest are irrelevant.

Some have stated that ECM standards aren’t practicable. These reasons vary from the shifting technology to the fact that serving-up the lowest common denominator of functionality provides a nearly useless standard. These are valid concerns. The question that we need to ask is, What problem are we trying to solve?

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4th of July Special

Nothing technical today. Today is about perspective. 231 Years ago, a bunch of colonist told the most powerful nation in the world that they were sick and tired and weren’t going to take it anymore. Five years later, they finally won their independence on the field, though it would be two years until a treaty was signed and another four years until they put an effective means of running it in place.

Think about that. Some of the brightest minds of the time took 11 years to go from declaring themselves ready for independence to actually realizing the dream of the United States. Every man that signed the Declaration of Independence knew that they were committing treason. They did it anyway, because the dream meant that much to them.

They didn’t agree on every issue. One issue in particular almost erupted into a small civil war in 1832 before erupting into an actual Civil War almost 30 years later. They got past it and our country came out stronger and better prepared for the next century.

In today’s world, we focus so much on what is happening now that we don’t always appreciate what has happened before. Lives have been sacrificed for the principles of the United States. Today isn’t about fireworks or the Star Spangled Banner. It is about remembering what it was that the 56 signers of the Declaration saw when they looked out their windows upon this land. A place for dreams. A place were all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Do you think you know enough about our country? Try this sample exam at MSNBC. If you don’t get at least an 95%, you need to hit the books. It isn’t enough to know what is going on in today’s world. Everyone should know what happened to shape our world and give us the freedoms that we take for granted.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go work on that whole pursuit of Happiness bit. Enjoy the 4th!

Choosing a Target for Standards

Reaction to my previous two posts revealed two simple things about the Universe. Enterprise Architects want/need ECM standards now. Enterprise Content Management people don’t think that the ECM world is ready for them. They are both right, so let the fighting begin.

Brian “Bex” Huff wrote about the lack of useful ECM standards and how writing a standard to the lowest common denominator would leave it all but useless. He raises some excellent points, but I think there is an important thing here. If an ECM system doesn’t support a minimal level of functionality, is it really Enterprise worthy? If it isn’t ready for the Enterprise, do we care if it can’t integrate with everything else? I’m thinking No on both counts.

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Evaluating EMC’s Content Management Certification

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So, I’ve now taken two of the exams offered in this space by EMC. I wanted to post some thoughts on the program as it has been applied to Documentum. I’ve been through more than one IT certification program in the past (including a Microsoft one that expired years ago), so I’m not new to this process. First, an overview of the EMC Proven Professional program.

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What is in a Title? My Journey to EMCApD

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So I decided that as head of my ECM Practice, I should set the example and get my EMC Proven Professional certification for Content Management. I took the first exam a couple of months ago, Content Management Foundations Exam (E20-120), and blew it away. This is good and what one would expect from any experienced Documentum “expert”.

Now came my dilemma. I’m an ECM Architect. I still develop, and have done so quite extensively in the past. I’ve known for quite a while that the first “Architect” exam isn’t due out for at least until the end of Q4. The problem was that I wanted to move beyond the Associate tag and grab the Specialist tag. To do this, I would have to take one of the two Application Development Specialist exams. That meant either the Server Programming Specialist Exam (E20-405) or the Web Application Programming Specialist Exam (E20-455). I had done a LOT more work with the Documentum Foundations Classes over the Web Development Kit course of the years, so I thought I would try that.

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My First Book Report in Decades

Normally, I don’t read too many work related books. I spend my time on public transportation reading either an entertaining Baseball Book or some good History. I normally expand my knowledgebase with experience, seminars/conferences, and research on the web. However, with the advent of D6 as an “SOA platform”, and the ever-enlarging reach of my projects, I decided I needed to accelerate the normal learning curve and do some extra outside reading. To help other Enterprise Content Management experts expand their knowledge, I decided to offer brief reviews of the books I read that apply to that world.

I am having to make Documentum part of the larger Enterprise more and more on each successive project (the challenges around that are best left for discussion another day). I have decided that I needed to at least become more familiar with the concepts around Enterprise Architecture. If my systems are going to be part of a properly architected Enterprise, I want to make sure I understand the high-level concepts and goals. I hadn’t run into any issues or misunderstandings yet, but I figure why wait?

Building Enterprise Information Architectures, Reengineering Information Systems After asking around, several people recommended the book, Building Enterprise Information Architectures, by Melissa A. Cook, to serve as an introduction into the concepts of Enterprise Architecture. So I borrowed it from a colleague and started reading. Only being 180 pages, it didn’t take long.

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SharePoint vs eRoom, or Microsoft vs the World?

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I’ve been discussing this topic of late. I haven’t been able to dive into SharePoint since my last post, but I have had some rather interesting things come up on this topic and wanted to share.

Josh Maher came up with quite an interesting view in his blog. SharePoint is for Microsoft people, and eRoom is for everyone else. His arguments seem sound until one detail comes forward, eRoom only works on Microsoft platforms. I don’t want to address the future here, just the present. eRoom requires:

  1. A database. SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, or an embedded SQL database that installs onto windows.
  2. Windows Server 2000 or 2003 with Internet Information Services (IIS) installed.

Doesn’t sound very anti-Microsoft to me. The difference here, as Josh points out, is that SharePoint works closely with all the latest Microsoft products. However, the latest SharePoint server also needs those newer products to fully garner all of the benefits. Microsoft wants you to upgrade your Office suite. That is more money in their pocket. When eRoom makes a release, they don’t typically require you to have the latest version of all the integrated products.

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Tips: Invasion of the Virtual Documents

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So, I have two topics that are burning for another post, but I had something fresh, and wanted to post on this topic while I still had my thoughts in a semi-coherent collection. Recently, I have run into more designs utilizing Virtual Documents than I had, quite possibly, ever. Your first thought may be that I have been working on similar projects. Wrong! Of these systems, I have seen one where Virtual Documents was called for, and the rest where I just wanted to shoot the designer. Well, once I just laughed because I couldn’t believe my eyes and didn’t have to fix it.

Now, I don’t know if maybe I happen to be in the wake of a rogue Documentum “Architect”. I use that term loosely because that is a term being bandied about more and more frequently. There are very few that I consider Documentum Architects, fewer that are ECM Architects, and none of them, including myself, are Enterprise Architects. However, that is a post for another day.

Regardless of the cause of my problems, I want to take a moment to clarify something that I learned back in Technical Fundamentals years ago, and that hasn’t changed. Virtual documents are a way to combine documents whose contents have a variety of formats into one document. That is a quote from the 5.3 Content Server Fundamentals. What does this mean? Here is a simple example. Say I am working for a Government Agency. When I produce the massive volumes of documentation for any project, I invariably have the same project overview and set of appendices in most of my documents. Some subsets of the documentation may share more content. A Virtual Document allows me to link all of the documents together, assemble them, and publish them as one document. So when I publish all of my documentation, I can be sure that my common resources match. When I update one, I update all.

Now there are several XML processing applications of Virtual Documents as well. However, Virtual Documents are not for grouping a set of files together, just to group them. Something I have seen (modified to protect the innocent) is using Virtual Documents for Case Management. In a case, you have source documents, reference documents, and output documents. That is an oversimplification, but it’ll serve here. What I have been seeing is making those all part of the same Virtual Document! DON’T DO THAT!!! If documents are related, you have at LEAST three easy choices:

  1. Put everything into a folder. Hmmmm. I kept the original files in a folder on a desk, why not a folder in my ECM system? I can even store Case information on the folder.
  2. Tag all the documents with a piece of metadata, like, oh I don’t know, a Case Number. Then you use a quick search to retrieve every related piece of Case content with a simple search. In D6, Documentum is taking this further in their Taskspace interface and not showing folders at all, but using “Smart Folders”. Smart Folders are just simple, saved searches based on some indexed value.
  3. Define a relationship within Documentum. Documentum already uses relationships for several functions including Annotations. You could define a custom relationship and implement it. This requires a little more work than the other two options, but there are times that it would prove more efficient.

There is more than one way to skin a cat and there is more than one way to design most systems. However, Virtual Documents are not to be used lightly. There are a lot of complications that can arise in everyday use of Virtual Documents. For instance adding or removing content from a Virtual Document requires checking the parent document in and the out. There are times where they are called for, but they should be clearly thought out before implementing.

Yet Another Style Shift

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I hate Microsoft. Actually, I find most people do on some level. For some people, it is on most levels. My reason of the day came when a nice reader told me how hard it was to read my blog. I got confused and then something hit me, IE. So I went to my IE browser that I keep to access systems written by Microsoft centric developers and SURPRISE! There was my center column all squished up. What looked lovely in Firefox, was horrible in IE. So I quickly picked a different generic CSS from WordPress that looked acceptable in both browsers. Now it looks like I have to take time to develop my own CSS so that I can get what I want without the dependence on others. So one more change is coming, but it will be the last, I hope.

Of course, this begs the question, why didn’t the first CSS developer test on IE? Doesn’t that make them as bad as Microsoft, just in reverse? Now back to your regular programming…

My Deconstruction

Well, it didn’t take long, but my first post on Standards has drawn some attention. James McGovern deconstructs my post doesn’t appear to pull many punches (though he may very well have done so). If you are in the ECM space, read his post. It offers an interesting view on the ECM space from the outside. While I had thought about waiting to respond until I had heard from others, my faith that I will hear from others on this topic is not very high. I would love to be proven incorrect. I welcome the feedback, but I’d like to hear from some ECM people.

I think I will start by saying that I agree with James on most points and he has a lot of valid questions. For some of them I know the answer. For others I don’t but plan to find out. And for a few I’m not sure if I can get the answers. I will be posting more on Standards as I go forward and learn more. I need to learn more first so that I don’t completely cut anyone off at the knees unfairly. Those that deserve it on the other hand….

The point of my post was mostly to mention the little I know about EMC’s efforts and remark on how my view of Standards has changed over time and recently. They are important and we need them, yesterday. Now that I’ve had this realization, I plan on making others care as well.

I will answer one question, what my definition of leaders in the ECM marketplace is. It is a very narrow definition of leading. I was referring to those that lead in the vision of what ECM is. These are the people that developed an ECM platform that can serve all parts of the Enterprise, not necessarily a platform that works as a part of the Enterprise. The type of leader that is needed, that James refers to, may not exist yet. I reserve my final judgment until I can confirm my gut on this issue.