DFC

Documentum Renewal: Architecting Content Applications

4 Comments

Of all my posts in this series, this is the one that is probably the least needed.  I say this because it looks like EMC is some of this now.  It does need to be said though, just so EMC know that we still care, and in case I am guessing wrong.  The themes for the Architecting of Content Applications is closely related to the Application Separation topic and in many ways, is the complement to the Focus on the Core edition.

I’m going to stay away from some specific feature requests for applications.  I would want to do complete run-downs on any app before I did that.  I want to be a little more strategic in my advice.

As always, please feel free to add/comment.

Continue reading →

Documentum Renewal: Focus on the Core

15 Comments

I just started writing a series on what EMC should do with their Documentum product as part of my Christmas gift to EMC. That part is key…this is a gift from the community because we want Documentum to be better and to stick around.

Why do I say the community? Simple enough…because I hear these things from many users at different installations across multiple verticals. I hear things from clients, partners, competitors, and random people at meetings.

We criticize because we care.

That being said, my first post in this series, on Application Separation, had a great reply from Lee Smith which is worth looking at.  Take a moment.

Today we are looking at the Content Server, the engine that makes everything work.

Continue reading →

Tip: Identifying Documentum Object Types

3 Comments

Last month, I ran into an error.  You know the type, vague, irritating, and an r_object_id that I didn’t recognize. (Okay, I never “recognize” an id given the complexity, but usually I can figure things out from the first two digits.)  The error basically said that the r_object_id “53…” did not exist.

Anyway, a quick look didn’t reveal anything. I determined that it wasn’t derived by dm_sysobject by doing a quick query on the table. I decided to throw the question out to Twitter and see what happened.

Okay fearless #Documentum hackers, what object type begins its r_object_id with a ’53’?

I got two replies, one from Lee Dallas (@ldallasBMOC) and another from David Matheson (@davidfmatheson).

@piewords #Documentum 53 is dm_literal_expr – if you are asking-you need to run data dictionary publish,clear caches restart app svrs

@piewords #Documentum @ldallasBMOC beat me to it, I would add you can check IDfId for the full list of what’s what in any version of DFC.

So Lee gave me the fix, which had already been executed, but he told me why the restart of the client application worked. (The Data Dictionary runs regularly in our environment, so it had already run). David taught me how to answer the question in the future.  I also found another way to make the determination as well.  I’m going to share them both now.

Continue reading →

Content-Enabled Applications in the Age of CMIS

10 Comments

Craig Randall recently posted how he was presenting on Building Content-Enabled Applications at EMC World, at least until he was downed by injury.  Regardless of his injury, this is a topic of great interest to me and I had a few conversations over the past year with him on the topic.  I wanted to chime in on his post to both amplify it and see if we can get some dialog going in advance of the conference.

What is a Content-Enabled Application?

Continue reading →

Answering James on CMIS

2 Comments

Back in December, James asked a few good questions regarding CMIS.  I thought I would take a minute to answer them as best I could, with apologies for the delay.  Any insight into making my answers more complete are welcome.  I am only on the outside looking into the process.

Continue reading →

Tips: Watch the DFC Registry Mode

8 Comments

I know that I owe a post on SharePoint and EMC World. I just keep getting sidetracked with these simple, easy, yet relevant topics. As much as I may wish it, project work continues even as we are prepping for the future of the Documentum world. In addition, it has been a while since I posted a Documentum Tips article.

This issue is something that, while not necessarily new in D6, is more relevant in the D6+ world that we are living in these days.

Continue reading →

EMC World 2008: Documentum 6.5 Architecture Overview

15 Comments

Time for an update on the architecture. Victor Spivak is presenting. He knows his stuff, so hopefully it’ll be a good one. I know waaay too many people in this room. I’ll never get to say hello to all of them. This is by far the most crowded session.

Continue reading →

Tips: Dynamically Creating Users in the DFC

9 Comments

Earlier today, James McGovern asked how to create a user through code in Documentum using either the DFC or DFS. I responded to him directly as I didn’t want him to have to wait for me to write a blog post to get the answer. However, I decided to share my answer with everyone while I watch the big game.

Continue reading →

ECM Standards, SAML, and the DFC

2 Comments

Time for some more dialog with James McGovern. I love this kind of discussion because it raises awareness of the issues in the community. James replied to my last post on Standardizing Authentication. There is a problem with written communication sometimes. No matter how clearly you think you write or explain something, someone will always either misread, misunderstand, or misinterpret something. Before I get into that, two things first.

In another post, James says something nice about ECM. Understand that ECM provides value regardless of whether it has standards. Can you feel the love? He does qualify that he isn’t pleased with the vendors, but we now know how he really feels.

Second, I wanted to say that James is dead on with this statement regarding SAML and Documentum. The beautiful thing is that you shouldn’t have to learn how to write this type of thing as this should be out of the box. He is absolutely correct. I shouldn’t even need to think about how I would implement SAML in Documentum. That is EMC’s job. Now on to the rest of James’ response/analysis.

Continue reading →

Standardizing Authentication

Been a busy week on the ECM standards front. There has been a lot of discussions going around. I’ve been silent on the topic as I’ve been focusing on learning more about SAML and XACML so that I can respond to James’ question. Plus, the dialogs are going great and I haven’t needed to keep them going.

I am not ready to give James an answer on XACML, yet. I feel I am ready to start a dialog on SAML though.

Continue reading →