SOA

Vendor Support for CMIS

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As I discussed yesterday, I’ve been waiting a long time for the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard.  There is still a fair amount of excitement out there as more people join the conversation.  I’m still excited, but the excitement is beginning to be tempered by reality.

There are two primary factors to standard adoption:

  • Is the standard technically sound?  It has to actually solve the stated problem.  It is okay if a standard is limited in functionality in initial drafts as long as it evolves to accomplish everything required.  At the same time, it must be easy enough to use.  These are not small technical challenges.
  • Is there vendor support?  Let’s face it, if the vendors don’t support it, then it will fail.  The JSR-170 and JSR-283 standards are perfect examples.  They aren’t supported by a critical mass of vendors.  The reasons range from the technical (we work in Java), to the philosophical (it is a bad standard, let’s focus elsewhere), and to the lazy (nobody cares so let’s ignore it).

Customers are important, but it takes a large mass of them to force the vendors to act.  I would qualify them as a secondary factor.  While I digest the technical aspects, take a look at the Vendor Support factor.

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Enter CMIS, a Proposed ECM-SOA Standard

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I am almost too excited for words.  Every thought I have is leading down ten different paths.  You may ask why.  Simple, they finally announced an ECM-SOA standard.  This new standard, Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS), has been submitted to OASIS for approval.  This is the same standard that I initially learned about at EMC World.

Emails streamed to me all day alerting me to this announcement, and I was blissfully offline.  Now I wish some people (you know who you are) had told me to pay attention this morning.  As it is, I’ve decided to let everyone of you know about it and give some thoughts to the effort.  I still have to review the actual specification and find out what this means to each of the key vendors.

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Knowledge Management is Marching Along

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For anyone that ever thought that Knowledge Management is dead, go forth into the blogsphere and watch it emerge anew. Like a Phoenix, it is rising from the ashes and beginning debates over again. It is nice to go back in time at reflect at how things were. It is even nicer to see the concepts that I’ve always thought important being revived as KM again.

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Enterprise 2.0, What, Why, and Knowledge Management

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So Billy and I started to discuss his article published by AIIM last month. Before that got very far, it got sidetracked by a new blog launch. Luckily for me, Bex finally jumped in to fill the conversational void. He threw out a definition and then started talking about what Enterprise 2.0 isn’t. I don’t fault him for that as I doubt that I could do better on the topic. I do believe that I can contribute though, so here it goes…

Everyone get out your bingo cards, its going to be a wild ride.

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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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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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