A NEW pillar for Support

For the past 10 years that I have been working with Documentum, I always felt that there was not a venue to discuss design issues, enhancement requests, or just share FAQs. Documentum Support Forums require a valid support contract to access the site. dm_developer is an open community, but there is little moderation.

I want to change this. My vision of this blog is not to address simple questions or provide input to error messages, but rather I want to encourage the development community to share their ideas and solutions. We need to stick together to overcome the ever increasing complexity of DCTM – aka EMC|Documentum.

36 Responses

  1. shiveshjha, on October 13th, 2006 at 6:30 am Said:

    Please let me ask a simple question to the documentum geek.

    What is the best strategy to save a html content in documentum using any client such as DFC standalone or Web Pulisher.

    Given the fact that the html document might have images, links etc. Also , I what if one doesn’t want to use html editors like eWebEditPro.

  2. johnnygee, on October 13th, 2006 at 4:42 pm Said:

    I prefer to be called Documentum Guru – not Documentum Geek :)

    Webpublisher allows you to associate images with web content. There are also link management tools that can integrate with Webpublisher.

  3. chanslien, on October 18th, 2006 at 12:02 am Said:

    I would like to know what Best Practices are for Security Model Design for Documentum. I read your notes about inheritance and we are headed toward your TBO/folder inheritance model in our redesign.

    I’m just curious if there’s a Best Practice for managing groups, security, distributed admin vs centralized etc, naming etc.

  4. johnnygee, on October 18th, 2006 at 12:54 am Said:

    I hope that my blogs are exemplary of this :) Best practices depend on many factors – more than I can discuss in my blog. There are plenty of consultants that can offer best practices; of course, this is not usually free.

  5. chanslien, on October 18th, 2006 at 10:15 pm Said:

    Thanks Johnny! Your blog is great!

  6. vaalee80, on October 19th, 2006 at 9:42 am Said:

    Hi Johnny! I hope I’m using this blog correctly!!
    I have found on of your thousand posts on EMC forum about rename folder.
    My problem is really the same: Is there way to not let users rename folders even if they have Write access? Only admin can rename folders. In that post, you said to use attributes_component.xml and some tags like and . I have create these tags in attributes_dm_folder_component.xml but it doesn’t work!
    Of course I take a mistake! Could you please help me?
    The maximum result could be to do this customization only for a cabinet, but in first instance it’s very good to do it also for all cabinets!
    Thanks! Have a good time!
    Valeria

  7. johnnygee, on October 19th, 2006 at 4:44 pm Said:

    Hi Valeria,
    I appreciate your feedback. I suggest you post your question in the EMC forums – that is the appropriate venue for specific coding questions. If I answered your question on my blog, my blog will be inundated with hundreds of questions from other users. My blog is focused on high level design and architecture – not specific customizations. Good luck.

  8. berenerchamion, on November 28th, 2006 at 6:38 pm Said:

    Hi Johnny,

    Just found your blog. I have a FAQ I think: What’s the best place to get C# coding examples using PIA and DFCs. I’m interested in things like:

    1. Add a document
    2. Delete a document
    3. Add a revision.

    Mostly the things that are not included in the C# sample application that basically only shows how to do some minimal browsing of a docbase.

    Any pointers would be great

    beren erchamion

  9. johnnygee, on November 29th, 2006 at 1:10 am Said:

    I’m not aware of any C# examples. Have you looked at the DFC development guide? Also, do you have access to Documentum Support Forums? If so, there is .NET forum that might have some samples.

  10. swampyben, on January 3rd, 2007 at 4:08 am Said:

    G’day Johnny, I was wondering if you know a way to maintain links within MS Project, so that you can create master schedules, with subordinate projects linked in to that schedule. If so, can this be done in a way that maintains the link to the most recent vesion label in Documentum?

  11. johnnygee, on January 3rd, 2007 at 4:09 pm Said:

    I’m not sure if this feature is available in WDK/Webtop product, but it is available as part of eRoom Viewer for MS Project:

    http://software.emc.com/products/software_az/eroom_viewer_for_microsoft_project.htm

  12. shrinivaskulkarni, on January 31st, 2007 at 3:51 am Said:

    So I was sitting at home trying to get that STUPID!!! powerlink site ( hehe … no offense to anyone) and I forgot the link to forums. So I tried googling for it and what do you know ….. I found this site. Ok ok so I may be the last one to know about it but hell yea I’m excited.

    Great work Johnny!!!! Its good to know that we will be able to discuss (or rather get to hear from Johnny :-) ) about design architecture. Let’s all hear it from the pro!! (now ain’t better than geek or guru :D ). Alright alright …. I’ll stop now.

    I just hope there is great participation and open discussions on this site.

    Shri

  13. dmoore01, on July 2nd, 2007 at 3:20 am Said:

    Hi Johnny. I am just wondering whether it is possible to refer to an attribute value in an alias. I would like to create an ACL Template with an alias set to r_creator_name and with this being evaluated dynamically. Ideally I would like to do it in standard DA, however I think I may have to utilise a TBO.

    Thanks
    Damien

  14. rowlandcutler, on July 4th, 2007 at 4:18 pm Said:

    Hi Documentum Guru.
    Thecompany I work for is using 5.25 and we’re planning to startup a little dev setup for 5.3
    Can I use a 5.25 version of Web Publisher on a 5.3 Content Server?

  15. johnnygee, on July 6th, 2007 at 11:31 am Said:

    You should be able to. The one thing I would be concerned about is full-text searching. In 5.3, Documentum switched full-text search engine from Verity to FAST. So your previous search in 525 may return you different results in 53.

  16. teknagu, on July 9th, 2007 at 5:24 am Said:

    Dear Johnny..could you provide some insight into migration methodology from Lotus Domino.Doc to DCTM 5.3..Request to kindly provide document or white paper if you have any..

  17. johnnygee, on July 11th, 2007 at 9:50 pm Said:

    Hi teknagu,
    I’m not aware of any migration whitepapers out there. I think there are java classes that allow you to interact with Domino.Doc (I know there are for Lotus Notes). You would have to write your own app to extract content and metadata from Domino.Doc and import into Documentum. Good luck.

  18. edwlee, on July 14th, 2007 at 12:54 am Said:

    Hi Johnny,
    Are you also a guru in the DCTM RM 5.3? We are developing a DM+RM solution for a client and having some problems with customizing the Rm 5.3. Any pointer to resources/another guru is much appreciated.

  19. sags3112, on August 1st, 2007 at 5:11 am Said:

    Hi Johnny,

    This is sagar and new bie to this forum..can you please let me know if you have any notes or books which you haev writen.

    It will be great if you kindly help me in this

    -Sags

  20. johnnygee, on August 3rd, 2007 at 6:43 pm Said:

    Hi Sags,
    All my notes are in mind and I havent written a book yet, but thanks for the vote of confidence.

  21. jw2tt, on August 9th, 2007 at 10:46 am Said:

    A mundane question about the site: is there an RSS feed?

  22. johnnygee, on August 9th, 2007 at 11:08 am Said:

    Hi jw2tt, thanks for the suggestion. I just posted RSS link on the sidebar. Let me know if it doesnt work.

  23. sags3112, on September 19th, 2007 at 5:55 pm Said:

    G’Day Johnny, Do you have any clear steps of Documentum Migration from 4.2.6 to 5.3

    -Sags

  24. johnnygee, on September 19th, 2007 at 11:22 pm Said:

    Have you read the migration guide for 5.0? I suggest you post your question in the EMC Support Forums. There is a forum just for migrations.

  25. rajind, on September 25th, 2007 at 9:19 pm Said:

    Hi Guru,

    Our company is thinking of using JSTL tags along with wdk tags for custom component pages or new component layout pages. would this create any conflict in terms of rending the html or any other issues? is this a common practice using the mix of these two.

    Thank you.

  26. johnnygee, on September 26th, 2007 at 11:00 pm Said:

    I have not used JSTL tags along with wdk, but I have created custom TLDs within the wdk framework.

  27. rajind, on October 3rd, 2007 at 6:55 pm Said:

    Hi Johnny,

    Thanks Johnny for your answer regarding JSTL tags.

    What kind of test framework people use in documentum projects especially when it comes to custom documentum project (lots of new components and java helper classes ) rather than just customizing WEBTOP.

    I have heared about the WDK test framework that documentum use internally for testing documentum products and is available on developer network for download.

    But the problem is no support available and also JUNIT is pretty standard in almost all java projects. So we are thinking of using JUNIT test framesk.

    what’s your thought about this approach?

    Thank you so much!

  28. johnnygee, on October 3rd, 2007 at 9:21 pm Said:

    Are you planning to develop application outside of the WDK framework? If so, then you have the flexibility to use JUNIT. If you are just customzing Webtop, then the WDK framework complicates the use of JUNIT. With D6, some of these complications goes away, since all components in D6 are called via url.

  29. rajind, on November 11th, 2007 at 3:07 pm Said:

    Hi Johnny,

    To access Enterprise contents from sources other than documentum repositoy(let’s say oracle tables and files of other systems) in a documentum environment what is the best approach?
    couple of things I can think of are
    * registered tables for accessing external table data
    * ECI services.
    Especially the focus is on security when accessing other systems data without compromising documentum applications security, firewalls etc.

    what document describes these approaches in documentum?

    Thanks.

  30. ajithprabhakar, on November 26th, 2007 at 7:01 pm Said:

    Hi Johnee ..
    We have a 4,x version of documentum implementation , we are builing a new solution based on D6,
    Now the pain is i need to move the data which we have in 4.x to D6 ,
    Can you suggest me some appoaches on this.

    In other sense i need to create a utility which will read from 4.x ver repository and re-create the same in D6 Repository. Can you please share your thoughs as how to apporach is ?

  31. johnnygee, on November 26th, 2007 at 7:57 pm Said:

    Hi Ajith,
    There is no straight-forward approach to doing this. You will basically have to re-write your front-end UI from scratch. As for your existing data, there are migration procedures on how to upgrade a 4.x docbase to 5.2 to 5.3 to D6. Although, this sounds like a lot of steps, this is the only supported way of upgrading a docbase. Re-creating a schema from scratch outside the context of Documentum is not recommended, since you dont know exactly what is done between different versions.

  32. ajithprabhakar, on November 26th, 2007 at 9:03 pm Said:

    Hi Johney ..
    Yes we are completely discarding the old application and writing from the scratches and planning to leverage DFS to a very large extend. Since we have only less than 100000 Objects we are planning to avoid the route of upgrading the existing content server.
    Our plan is to have a fresh D6 Environment and recreate the data in the new environment. What i was thinking of was creating a multi step approach in which as the first step use 4.x DFC get the Object information and content from the repository, save that to a location outside documentum (may be a collection ) then use a program to read this data from this saved location and write create objects in the new environment using D6 DFC.

  33. johnnygee, on November 26th, 2007 at 9:28 pm Said:

    There are plenty of migration tools out there that might save you some time. Perform a search on Tadsbits and OpenMigrate.

  34. ajithprabhakar, on November 27th, 2007 at 1:46 pm Said:

    Hi Johney ,
    Thanks a lot for your input,
    Ajith

  35. sivdm, on June 11th, 2008 at 12:12 am Said:

    Hi Johnney,

    I have developed a small application for Documentum. Please try and let me know your feedback. I need a review from the Documentum Guru.

    My blog’s link:
    http://sivlabs.wordpress.com

    Thanks a lot for your support to the Documentum community.
    Siva

  36. sanketsharma, on July 31st, 2008 at 2:50 pm Said:

    Hi there,

    My question is around documentum’s high availability architectures. We decided to go for single repository distributed model in our organization. The head office was chosen as primary site for content server while regional offices for distributed storages. Moreover, it was decided to replicated regional offices to the content store at head office so that head office always has all the data available in case any of the regional sites go down.
    Now, we are looking for disaster recovery and high availability alternatives for this head office site (since it hosts all meta data and content).
    The DR content server will have a single physical storage and not distributed. Would it be enough to setup object replication between primary docbase and DR docbase? How will the content be restored in such a case?

    Are there any better DR alternatives available? The official distributed configuration guide provides details but not enough details for such a setup. Are there any resources avaiable?

    Thanks!
    Sanket

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