The past week I took part in a workshop about xCP, the xcellerated Composition Platform of EMC Documentum
The platform is a wrapper around a set of existing Documentum modules and used to be called the Case Management Framework. The latter is however ‘just’ a solution build on top of the platform.
One of the ‘assets’ of the platform is a one-click installer for the Windows OS. In this article, I will discuss their asset in more depth because it has potential, lacks still many things but foremost can be a quality impulse to core Documentum.
There is analogy with the Documentum Developer Edition. Also a one-click installer. It delivers a Content Server with Webtop, the Administrator and Retention Policy Services. If you need more, like I needed WebPublisher and PageBuilder, you have to add that yourself This requires unpacking the wp.war file, changing some properties, copying the unpacked war to the application server (because – according to the documentation – available hot-deployment of the re-packed wp.war just didn’t take off) and restarting the application server.
It also includes the execution of a WebPublisher server components installer.
The configuration of the one-click installer for the developer edition can be enhanced to also install an additional DocApp or DAR, Unfortunately adding an additional war file is not included. Anyway, I had to read to several documents to get to a working development edition including WebPublisher.
The question that comes to mind is: Can the one-click installer be enhanced with out-of-the-box the (optional) installation of modules (like WP, DAM, BPS/TaskSpace or Records Manager) in order to create a win-win situation from development up to production?
The win on Documentum side comes from them being the one to decide on how the modules are to be configured for installation By doing so they create a solid base that will reduce their support effort significantly. If someone should know how the Documentum modules must be installed in order to work together, it’s EMC. Also, from sales perspective this is a benefit.
If you’re in the Documentum business you probably can share horror stories of errors in the base configuration that caused instability and ghost incidents.
This is what can be avoided with a one-click installer.
The win for the customer comes from both reduced maintenance effort as well as increased stability. Also a reduced time to market comes to mind but also reproducibility of the installation over multiple environments.
Today the one-click installer is not at that point but it can get there with some enhancements. The major enhancements that are needed are:
- include all available modules as options
- include the ability to install against an existing RDBMS
- include the ability to install against an existing application server for the clients
- include the ability to install on any supported operating system
- include the ability to install multiple consent servers
- include the ability to re-run the installer to at least add modules in war or dar format.
None of these are impossible. They do take some testing once the brain-work has been done.
It must be understood that this will exclude some rare but possible mixtures. For those manual adoption must be possible against the price of “being on your own” or the price of a consulting effort. Ideally this would show in the maintenance fee.
Once we’ve reached this milestone, it becomes a small step towards a full install of all modules and unlocking functionality by supplying license keys. A model used by Adobe on their LiveCycle platform with success. Those of you familiar with installing new applications into a controlled production environment know that having all modules already installed, saves a huge amount of time. Time that can be used to be faster to market. Combine that with the speed of solution delivery on the xCP platform and the customer will have a noticeable shorter IT cycle compared to traditional Documentum projects.
Bottom line: If only EMC would enhance the one-click installer into a full product installation, it would make customers and partners more than happy!
Today both the one-click installer for developers as well as xCP are good enough for development, PoC’s or demonstrations. For installations into test, acceptance and production environments or on non-Windows, they are not yet suited.
