Ed’s Content Matters

It has been almost 4 weeks since Momentum Europe 2008 started in Prague. Most of the news has been shared already. In the mean time almost all presentations have become available for download for the attendees. So, aside van the many presentations that I actually attended, I’ve been able to read quite a few of them. Now is thus the time for me to do some reflection.

There are several topics that are worth mentioning. They are: Web 2.0/CenterStage and High Volume Server. There are also some loose ends that I will talk about.

Web 2.0/CenterStage
For those that don’t know what CenterStage is, it is another client that provides basic content services to enhance individual and team productivity. Although not officially said so, it is to replace the functionality of eRoom (and to add MOSS like functionality) in a Web 2.0-ish interface.
CenterStage Essentials (free!) is available as beta and scheduled to be released in April 2009. CenterStage Pro (not free!) is due to follow that soon. The true Web 2.0 features (tagging, RSS, wikis and blogs) are part of the Pro release. With the Pro release EMC again will have a solution that is capable of competing with MOSS.

During Momentum there have been several sessions that were fully geared towards the – for EMC Documentum – new Web 2.0 hype. And people responded to that hype! Sadly, they have to wait another year before a useful release becomes available with the functionality that is out on the street today. Off course, the difference will be that it will be (largely) integrated into the core platform and better managed and controlled. But functionality wise there is nothing new. Within e.g. WordPress for blogs and MediaWiki for wikis,  you can already use roles and rights to control the information that is published and read. And yes, storing your data in a MySQL database is maybe not as good as in the core Documentum platform if you take the holistic view. But building your own client might not be needed now that we’re working on CMIS (see later on). So my question is: why not build CMIS adaptors for WordPress and MediaWiki in order to get best of both worlds?

I admit that I over-simplify things a little here. Still, in comparison to the CenterStage hype, it’s not too much ?.

High Volume Server
One thing I did get excited about was the High Volume Server (HVS). OK, admitted, for those familiar with database normalization, it’s all stuff in new bags. But let me explain.

The HVS normalizes the object model by introducing the Lightweight SysObject. Imagine that you store ten-thousands or more objects on a daily basis. Why waist time and space by repeating the common elements for such batches?
There is common data (attributes) that is stored for each object. Think of a run date, a retention policy etc. All these shared data is stored in a Full SysObject that acts as a parent to the Lightweight SysObject children.
There is common communication between client and server and between server and database. Scoping is used to reduce the message between client and the content server by cashing system communication responses. Batching is used to insert objects together as a batch rather than inserting them one by one. (duh!).
Finally there is data partitioning. This breaks the base-table into multiple pieces allowing e.g. off-line ingestion.

As said, technology wise not new and spectacular. For Documentum however it is.

Loose Ends
One of the loose ends I need to say something about is the emphasis on solution frameworks. EMC has said that 2009 will be the year for Solution Frameworks. Case Management will be the first. To EMC a Solution Framework is intended to kick-start development and both ease and fasten the deployment of a solution. Such a Solution Framework will include a number of ready built objects and UI features on top of core Documentum as well as sample business applications.
The good news is, that EMC won’t move into the packaged business solutions but offers components to speed up the overall implementation.
Still, we’ll have to wait and see what actually will be the quality of these frameworks. What will be included and what is expected but is not? This question remains unanswered until the first release.
What is also a blind spot so far: how will EMC gain the knowledge include the commonalities of e.g. a legal case? EMC is not well known for the business expertise and relies on there partners for that. Also: what frameworks other than ‘Case’ and ‘Dossier’ will they deliver? Could be that a Solution Framework will not be a business framework but a technical framework.
Altogether it’s to early to judge.

The final thing I want to mention is about CMIS. It’s not strictly a Momentum topic but is was covered there as well. CMIS is an initiative to create a interoperability standard between content management solution. Being able to read a FileNet repository from Documentum, feed MOSS widgets with merged Documentum and Oracle UCM content or – and this is not in scope now – store your WordPress content in whatever CMS you want.

Some loose remarks:

• I did not see or hear about a live demo by EMC during any of the presentations. Both customers and partners keep being disappointed by this. It’s time EMC steps up and start doing live demo’s. We all understand that demo’s may fail. I must give EMC credit for the increased number of screen casts but these remain inflexible.
• FAST will be replace as the default boxed search engine by Lucene. For enhanced search functionality, there will be a pluggable architecture that allows you to continue to just FAST or Verity or whatever your taste is.
• The sessions by Ed Bouche on performance and other do’s and don’ts were great.
• xDB (forme xHive) sells surprisingly well separate and is now integrated as another store. Many, including me, believe that in the future this could replace the RDBMS for e.g. metadata