Are all your scanned documents accounted for?

The most important aspect of integrating two systems is to assure that there is a solid hand-shake and that the communication is accurately handled. Consider this transaction between Input Accel & Documentum:

Export Module> Request is made to create an object type for document
Content Server> returns Object id
Export Module> Set attributes for document
— network error —

The challenges of hiring

This past few weeks we have been trying to interview and place a technical consultant for our project and it turned out to be quite a challenge. I had my share of unique experiences and here are some:

• This guy claimed himself to be an architect and had about 5 years of experience. I start to wonder if folks understand what it takes to be an Architect (its a separate article unto itself)? And so, I start interviewing him and he is not even close to what he claims to be. He’s not a senior developer to begin with – asked him a question from his project as to why he took a certain approach among the options and he had no clue. And brought up the security model and he couldn’t even describe what was setup, much less why its done that way. Although he was better technically (all on a relative scale) than few others we interviewed, the mere fact that he over-sold himself turned out to be the worst mistake.

ECM Market at a snapshot in time

For those who hadn’t had a chance to review Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, 2007 from Gartner Inc., would be interested to know that IBM is positioned as the Leader for its ability to execute and completeness of vision. EMC is immediately following it and according to Mark Lewis, President, Content Management and Archiving Division at EMC, launch of Documentum 6 Platform and recent acquisition of X-Hive Corporation, supports organization’s in place vision and strategy. Unless IBM makes any major releases or strategic moves, EMC might very well be in the leading position next year. OpenText and Oracle are also positioned in the Leader’s quadrant.

What's new in D6

Here are some hot new features in D6. Please feel free to share if you know more
ACS/BOCS:

• ACS/BOCS server can write content to a repository, either synchronously or asynchronously. Writing content synchronously ensures that all users at all network locations have immediate access to the content. Writing content asynchronously improves the performance of import and check-in operations, because remote users do not need to wait for the content to be uploaded to the central site. And Content can be pre-cached on BOCS servers using new BOCS caching jobs.
• DA can be used to gather key statistics about cache requests and monitor status of the ACS and BOCS servers

ETL for Documentum

ETL, Extract, Transfer & Load, tools are essential for customers implementing Content Management solutions. Although initial implementation tends to focus on generating new content, the solution inevitably ends up having to migrate their legacy content. The most popular, out of the shelf, ETL solution available in the market for Documentum migration today is Crown Partner’s Buldoser.

Now, do you really need to buy the product for this purpose?

Annoying little things with Documentum

More often than not, the bugs (uncritical) encountered by QA are retained in the product, than push the release date. Seldom, its also the case that QA doesn’t account for certain test cases trying to keep up with the ever growing features of the product. Here are some annoying little details that I ran into in the last couple weeks alone, with Documentum suite of products

XML – the heart of the future CMS Infrastructure

Content, by definition, is difficult to categorize and provide structure; and XML technology, by definition, is a general-purpose markup language and is classified as an extensible language because it allows its users to define their own tags. The flexibility offered by XML technology makes it a natural fit for the complexity posed by the Content Management Systems.

Free-Form Taxonomy

When designing Content Management System for an organization, the architects inevitably spend time designing the Taxonomy for the content. It is enormously important from the business stand point to organize the content to be able to logically access it the way we would find paper based files in the huge locked away cabinets (this very line exposes the disconnect).

Now, I am here to question the ROI on this.

Can I ping a docbroker?

Often times it becomes necessary to know which Docbases a Docbroker is aware of. One of the typical scenario’s that this becomes necesssary is when you are at a client’s site and the connection to docbase is not happening and you need to be doubly sure that the docbroker is not just up, but it knows of the docbase you want to connect to. And ofcourse, if you need any health check scripts, this comes handy.

Kaam Chor (Slacker)

[Definition: Kaam Chor – One who evades his or her duty or work; shirker]
I ponder why its so hard to create, find and retain well natured, ethical, hard-working and honest employees for a company these days (relativity kept in mind!) Its not perhaps all the the individual’s fault – the company’s have become blood-sucking leeches which drop their employees like what the Dracula does to its victim when its done with it – all in the name of business (obviously, I am not generalizing here).

Just like the perfect balance with food-chain its all a balance here as well, and it seems especially skewed these days.