Hadoop, a leading technology disruptor from the Big Data movement, is a massively scalable architecture capable of dealing with terabytes+ of unstructured data. As the cost of storage, memory and CPU continues to move toward almost free, we are seeing the clients looking to move away from traditional legacy ECM tools for the newer architecture and cost savings by managing their documents with Hadoop. On major advantage of Hadoop versus traditional vendors is the ability to add attributes “on the fly”. This post is will describe an ECM content model for Hadoop and walk through the process of add and remove attributes “on the fly” based on our experience from Hadoop ECM clients.
OpenContent
Hadoop Web Service REST API for Enterprise Content Management using TSG’s OpenContent
Many of our ECM clients often develop their own Web Services layer to isolate their applications from the back-end repository as well as provide a vehicle to add in their own services to talk to other non-ECM systems. OpenContent was developed as part of our Documentum practice to give clients a standard web services architecture with an open source approach. OpenContent is now available for the Hadoop NoSQL database, HBase. This post will detail the web services available in our first release with examples and explanations.
Hadoop – OpenContent/HPI Product Plans
The first step in supporting all of the TSG products on Hadoop is building our OpenContent REST Web Services layer to access Hadoop in the same manner we access Documentum, Alfresco and other content management systems. This post will present our plans and timelines for OpenContent along with associated TSG solutions.
Documentum Migration to Alfresco – Development Environment Comparison
Beyond the features and look and feel of ECM user interfaces discussed in our initial posts, we recognize the importance of a stable and robust development environment necessary to facilitate the customization, support and maintenance of an ECM platform. We also recognize that organizations who use Documentum today likely employ staff with Documentum specific skill sets, and they are probably wondering how these skills might transfer into the Alfresco world. This post provides an overview of the commonalities and differences between both development environments.
Active Wizard 4.0 Preview – OpenContent & Active Wizard Lite
Our next release of the Active Wizard will be 4.0, and it will mark the beginning of some big changes for the Active Wizard. Our overall architecture direction is to move to a web services model based on OpenContent. While this change is more of a back-end update that regular users won’t notice, it will have a big impact on the product’s flexibility in the overall architecture.
As part of the switch to OpenContent, we’re also adding Adobe Flex components to improve the overall look and usability of the application. As part of this effort, we’ve developed a “lite” version of the Active Wizard. Active Wizard Lite (AWLite) allows a user to fill out a form using the Adobe Flex interface. Currently AWLite follows the streamline model of the Active Wizard – users are launched directly into the form, and after the form is filled out, it is submitted and the user receives a confirmation page. The current iteration of AWLite is based on OpenContent’s Filesystem/Database services, so no Documentum instance is needed to run the form. AWLite will support Documentum in the future, but for now, we wanted to keep AWLite as slim as possible.
We’re currently using AWLite in the D6.5 Upgrade Guide on our website. If you’d like to see how AWLite works – check it out! Simply click the “Download the D6.5 Upgrade Guide” link to launch AWLite. As an added benefit for those of you who are planning a migration to D6.5, after completing the form you will receive TSG’s D6.5 upgrade whitepaper.
Here’s a screenshot of the Active Wizard Lite interface for the D6.5 upgrade guide:
Active Wizard Lite – Embedded Mode
We’ve recently completed a project for a leading university medical center where we implemented an Active Wizard form for Chemotherapy Notes/Orders. As part of this project, we updated the wizard so that the Adobe Flex interface that runs Active Wizard Lite could be embedded into the full Active Wizard interface. So, when a user is editing a form, the Adobe Flex version of Active Form is displayed:
This form had a number of fields that required rich text – namely the ability to enter superscript text to support formulas. To enable this functionality, we added a WYSIWYG answer type. Clicking the answer background launches the rich text editor:
Once the user is finished, the results are displayed on the form:
Overall, we’re very exited about the coming updates to Active Wizard 4.0. If you have any comments or ideas for functionality we should include we’d love to hear them!
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