Documentum

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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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.

Technology Standards and the Enterprise, Getting Too Much Attention?

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I have a bunch of things that I have wanted to talk about on this blog. I am going to be the first to admit, that standards wasn’t really on my radar to write about here. In years past, whenever I got to the standards portions of ECM presentations in years past, I only cared because saying a product met standards meant it might be easier to sell. More recently, I had begun to understand and care, but only enough to pay more attention and think about how it can help my current projects. In the past few weeks, the topic of standards has been showing up all over my radar, and then it hit me. I need to make everyone else care as well.

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SharePoint and EMC

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One of my favorite Documentum bloggers outside of yours truly, Johnny Gee, has been blogging of late on SharePoint and Documentum. He ran a three part series comparing the two. Yesterday, he posted an entry comparing SharePoint and eRoom. This was even commented upon by an Enterprise Architect blog that I regularly read by James McGovern. I read the entry, and it has drawn an interesting, and very dead-on, observation. The latest post has a very decided pro-eRoom stance. In Johnny’s defense, he was just posting some observations from a reader and not taking credit. One the other hand, it is a very biased view of the world.

First, let me say that I do not have the depth of knowledge to take up SharePoint’s defense in detail. I am also not as inclined to do so being a little pro-EMC. However, I will make two statements about eRoom and SharePoint:

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EMC’s Vision of ECM 2.0

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I’ve previously posted on how D6 is laying the foundation for ECM 2.0 (E2), as well as some of the key features of that release. Before I start delving into some of those features in detail, I though I would go over what E2 is envisioned to be once it is delivered. Personally, this is a lot of marketing-speak, as is Web 2.0, but it shows a lot about the why in the future of Documentum.

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Bonus Post on the CMA

Bonus post? How can there be a bonus post after two days of not posting??? Simple, while I was working on the post that follows this, I wrote this post as part of it. I then decided to break it out. Thus bonus. Since I decided this had to be posted first, the chaos followed.

Here is a quick breakdown of how EMC is now classifying their Content Management and Archiving (CMA) group (the latest name for Documentum product family) into four Content Types:

  1. Knowledge Worker: Collaborative Content Management, focusing on personal and team productivity and extranet collaboration. This is where all the traditional Document Management and Collaborative solutions go to roost. This includes office documents, discussions, emails, project plans, and so forth. Products and features that are hidden under here include Lifecycles, Enterprise Application Integration such as Content Services for SharePoint and SAP, eRoom, Collaborative Edition (CE), Content Intelligence Services (CIS), and Enterprise Content Integration (ECI) Services.
  2. Transactional Content Management: This is basically Captiva plus all the fun business process tools to make them compete with IBM, formerly known as FileNet. In addition to the scanning and imaging, they have thrown in Business Process Manager and their Forms tool. The new Taskspace is also under here.
  3. Interactive Applications: Here is our friendly Web Content Management (WCM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM). They have combined these, in a fairly astute move. Let’s face it. These days everyone’s website, except mine, has lots of rich media. They need to work together closely. Supporting this is the Content Transformation products as well.
  4. Archival Content: Welcome to Records Management (RM) and all the fun of Archiving. While the other categories cover different types of content, this covers the last stages in a piece of content’s life before it is lost and destroyed forever. This group covers RM, Archive Services for Reports and Email, and all other Archival Services products. I don’t focus on this group much as Records Management isn’t changing quickly and until Documentum completes the creation of their new lightweight sysobject in D6 sp1 (yes, I am already waiting for the first service pack coming next winter), the use of the Documentum Content Server as a platform for massive archiving, read emails, is probably best left in the lab.

How long will these new divisions last? Longer than normal as they seem thought out. The only threat that I see is if the overall platform development is hindered by this division.

Building Documentum Talent

Inspired by reading a post over on Ask Johnny!, I decided to add a page discussing the training and development of Documentum resources. With the continuous shortage in quality Documentum technical resources, the ability for organizations to build talent is paramount. I hope that this page will allow the community to approach staffing from a slightly different angle.

…And the Wait Ends

The EMC World 2007 Presentations are available for download. Things are better than expected as they are available directly from the EMC World 2007 website as opposed to Powerlink. They aren’t organized as I would like, but they are there and they are fairly simple to find as they are listed alphabetically.

Anyway, the upshot is that soon I will have some new posts. Some topics that I am going to post upon are SharePoint, Documentum Foundation Services, and TaskSpace, among others. If anyone has a request for a specific D6 or Architecture related topic, just add a comment and I will either add it to my list or move it up my priority list.

And the Wait Continues….

I had previously mentioned that there were some things that I wasn’t fond of at the combined EMC World 2007. Many of which were annoyances and didn’t significantly impact my ability to get what I needed from the conference. We have a new development. On the EMC World website, they have stated that the presentations will not be available until June 12. To make matters worse, they will be accessible only on PowerLink and it will require the user to search for the presentations.

Let me put this into perspective for everyone. This is the website that took 6 months to get my contact information correct after they moved it from the old Documentum Support site, and I know some organizations that just gave up on that effort. The search has always been tricky at best, even when you “qualify” the search with their pull-down lists. Plus, now we are waiting almost 3 weeks after the end of the conference to get them, when the linkage between memory, notes, and slides will not be very strong. In prior years, I would start downloading presentations before I even flew home.

I took good notes in most sessions. I hope everyone else did. If not, keep track of blogs and EMC forums for explanations on your favorite topics. If you have one that you missed or need refreshing, ask me and if I know, I’ll answer.