Introducing Java Code Generator 1.0 A Utility to generate Java Beans from Documentum Objects


Java Code Generator generates Java classes from Documentum Object types. Few bullet points about what this utility does

  • Generates Java Classes from the Documentum Object types
  • All non-inherited Attributes will be member variables of the Generated Java Class
  • An array of the Object type for Repeated Attributes.
  • Class name by default will be capitalized name of the underlying Documentum object type
  • Option to prefix and suffix class name
  • Option to specify the Package name
  • Supports DFS Annotation

After a couple of Beta versions finally, I am glad to announce The Java code Generator. Thanks a lot for all who tried this and send the valuable feedbacks to me. I tried to incorporate most of the suggestions and fix many of the bugs in this version

 I have added a new DFC version of this tool to the download page.

Click here to Go to Downloads page

Using Java reflection to reduce Code and Development time in DFS


 

Java reflections are one of the most powerful API’s of Java Language, this can be used to reduce code significantly.

Most of the Current Enterprise application consists of different layers and they use Value objects to transfer data from one layer to another. An inefficient way of using getters and setters of the attributes of Value objects can increase code and development time of application. Effective use of reflection can reduce code and development time significantly.

So let’s take a Scenario,  I have an Object type MyObjectType extending from dm_document with 50 additional attributes, so dm_document as of Documentum 6.5 has 86 attributes adding additional 50 attributes that means we have 139 attributes for this object type. Consider a standard Web Application using DFS behind which needs to manipulate (add or edit) instances of this object type, The Service needs to add all these attributes to the PropertySet  of the DataObject representing that instance. Then need to call the appropriate service.

 

Considering that the bean instance name of MyObjectType is myObjectBean the Standard code will  be something like this

  ObjectIdentity objIdentity = new ObjectIdentity("myRepository");
  DataObject dataObject = new DataObject(objIdentity, "dm_document");
  PropertySet properties = dataObject.getProperties();
  properties.set("object_name", myObjectBean.getObject_Name());
  properties.set("title", myObjectBean.getTitle()); 
  // omited for simplicity


  objectService.create(new DataPackage(dataObject), operationOptions);

 

In the above code you have to explicitly set individual attributes for the object, the more the number of attributes the more complex and messy code.

Take another Example, where you have to retrieve an Object information and pass it over to the UI layer.

 myObjectBean.setObject_name(properties.get("object_name").getValueAsString());
 myObjectBean.setTitle(properties.get("title").getValueAsString());
 myObjectBean.setMy_Custom_Property(properties.get("my_custom_property").getValueAsString());

This operation can be more complex if you decide to use match the Data Type of your bean with the Object type.

 

So what is the best approach to reducing this complexity? the answer is the effective use of reflection API.

Let’s take a step to step approach to handle this issue.

To understand this better consider the below as the attributes of mycustomobjecttype

 

Attribute Name Attribute Type
first_name String
last_name String
age integer
date_purchased time
amount_due double
local_buyer boolean

 

Java Bean

Create a Java Bean that matches the Object Type

 public class Mycustomobjecttype {
  protected String first_name ;
  protected String last_name  ;
  protected int age;
  protected Date date_purchased  ;
  protected double amount_due  ;
  protected boolean local_buyer ;
  public int getAge() {
    return age;
  }
  public void setAge(int age) {
    this.age = age;
  }
  public double getAmount_due() {
    return amount_due;
  }
  public void setAmount_due(double amount_due) {
    this.amount_due = amount_due;
  }
  public Date getDate_purchased() {
    return date_purchased;
  }
  public void setDate_purchased(Date date_purchased) {
    this.date_purchased = date_purchased;
  }
  public String getFirst_name() {
    return first_name;
  }
  public void setFirst_name(String first_name) {
    this.first_name = first_name;
  }
  public String getLast_name() {
    return last_name;
  }
  public void setLast_name(String last_name) {
    this.last_name = last_name;
  }
  public boolean isLocal_buyer() {
    return local_buyer;
  }
  public void setLocal_buyer(boolean local_buyer) {
    this.local_buyer = local_buyer;
  }
}

Getting the Values from PropertySet (Loading Java Bean)

……

List<DataObject> dataObjectList = dataPackage.getDataObjects();
DataObject dObject = dataObjectList.get(0);
Mycustomobjecttype myCustomObject = new Mycustomobjecttype();
populateBeanFromPropertySet(dObject.getProperties(),myCustomObject);

……

// See the Reflection in Action here 
public void populateBeanFromPropertySet(PropertySet propertySet, Object bean)
  throws Exception {
 BeanInfo beaninformation;
 beaninformation = Introspector.getBeanInfo(bean.getClass());
 PropertyDescriptor[] sourceDescriptors = beaninformation.getPropertyDescriptors();
 for (PropertyDescriptor descriptor : sourceDescriptors) {
     Object result = null;
     String name = descriptor.getName();
    if (!name.equals("class")) {
      if (propertySet.get(name) != null) {
        if (descriptor.getPropertyType().getName().equals("int")) {
          result = new Integer(propertySet.get(name)
              .getValueAsString());
        } else if (descriptor.getPropertyType().getName().equals("double")) {
          result = new Double(propertySet.get(name).getValueAsString());
         } else if (descriptor.getPropertyType().getName().equals("boolean")) {
          result = new Boolean(propertySet.get(name).getValueAsString());
         } else if (descriptor.getPropertyType().getName().equals("java.util.Date")) {
          DateProperty dat = (DateProperty)propertySet.get(name);
          result = dat.getValue();
        }else {
          // none of the other possible types, so assume it as String
          result = propertySet.get(name).getValueAsString();
        }
        if (result != null)
          descriptor.getWriteMethod().invoke(bean, result);
      }
     }
  }
}

Setting Values to Property Set

 

public DataPackage createContentLessObject(Mycustomobjecttype myCustomType) throws Exception {
ObjectIdentity objectIdentity = new ObjectIdentity("testRepositoryName");
DataObject dataObject = new DataObject(objectIdentity, myCustomType.getClass().getName());
PropertySet properties = populateProperties(myCustomType);
properties.set("object_name",myCustomType.getFirst_name()+myCustomType.getLast_name() );
dataObject.setProperties(properties);
DataPackage dataPackage = new DataPackage(dataObject);
OperationOptions operationOptions = new OperationOptions();
return objectService.create(dataPackage, operationOptions);
}

 

// Reflection in Action  
public PropertySet populateProperties(Object bean)throws Exception {
BeanInfo beaninfo;
PropertySet myPropertyset = new PropertySet();
beaninfo = Introspector.getBeanInfo(bean.getClass());  
PropertyDescriptor[] sourceDescriptors = beaninfo
      .getPropertyDescriptors();
  for (PropertyDescriptor descriptor : sourceDescriptors) {
    String propertyName = descriptor.getName();
    if (!propertyName.equals("class")) {
        // dont set read only attributes if any
       // example r_object_id 
       if (!propertyName.startsWith("r")) {
        Object value = descriptor.getReadMethod().invoke(bean);
       if (value != null) {
          myPropertyset.set(propertyName, value);
        }
      }
   }
 }
  return myPropertyset;
}

Aliases and Alias sets in Documentum


 

In Simple words Aliases are placeholders that can hold any of the following

1)      A User or a Group Name

2)      Folder information

Alias is a key value pair where key is the alias name and value is the actual value.

 

Alias Sets are the Collection of Aliases (Which has alias names and its values)

 

Typical uses of Aliases

1)      Dynamically Resolve task performers in a Workflow

2)      Set up ACL, ACL Domain, and Owner name in a Sys Object or its subtypes.

3)      Dynamically link or unlink an object of Sys object or its subtype with a Folder path

4)      Also used in Template ACL’s (I will explain more about Template ACL in another study note soon)

 

Internals of an Alias and Alias sets

Documentum uses an Object type named dm_aliase_set to store the aliases and its values. All the objects of this type will have a r_object_id starting with “66”

Let’s see the attributes of this object type 

 

 

Name

Info

Description

alias_category

Integer (Repeating)

This defines the category of the aliases value in the corresponding index.   These are the possible values and its corresponding categories

Value

Category

0

Unknown

1

User

2

Group

3

User or Group

4

Path of Cabinet

5

Path of Folder

6

Name of ACL

alias_description

String (255) (Repeating)

This defines the option description for individual alias values that correspond to the index in alias names.

alias_names

String (32) (Repeating)

The name of alias for the corresponding index in the alias values. (This Sting cannot have (.))

alias_usr_ category

Integer (Repeating)

Placeholder for defining user-defined categories for alias values.

alias_value                      

String (255) (Repeating)

The corresponding values for the Aliases defined the corresponding index in the alias names]

object_name

String (32) (Single)

Name of the Alias set

  • Has to be Unique among the alias sets in the repository

object_description

String (128 ) (Single)

Description of the alias sets

owner_name

String (32) (Single)

The name of the user who owns this alias sets.

 

So now you have seen what makes a dm_alias_set object, now let’s clarify how an Alias is defined within an Alias set.

Alias_names stores the name of the Alias and Alias_value stores the corresponding value for the Alias and it’s stored as a repeatable attribute. Means value of an index position defines an Alias Category, Alias Name and Alias Value

 

In an example of an Alias manager = John Smith the index of listing manager in attribute alias_name and index of listing John Smith in attribute alias_value will be same

 

Alias Reference and Scope of Alias

 

Alias is referenced used %alias_name

Referencing an Alias can also include Object_name of Alias Set; in that case, the reference will be %alias_set_object_name.alias_name

 

So if the alias is referenced with the Alias set names (%alias_set_object_name.alias_name

) Server finds the Alias set by name and picks up the Alias name and resolve its Alias value, this is pretty much a straightforward job for the server to do.

 

But where the Alias name is referred without Alias set name the Server searches for the Alias in some specific scopes, This Order, and location, where the search is made for alias, depends upon where that alias is referenced.

 

The following table describes few important Scopes, underlying object type and attribute of that object that helps server to identify the alias set to resolve the alias names.

 

Scope

Object type

Attribute

Notes

User

dm_user

alias_set_id

Server user alias_set_id property of the user who has done the action that resulted in alias resolution.

Group

Dm_group

alias_set_id

Default group of the user who performed the action

Lifecycle

Dm_sysobject

R_alias_set_id

R_alias_set_id is set by the server when the object is attached to a lifecycle.

Server Configuration

Dm_server_config

Alias_set_id

This alias set object represents the alias set that’s used as the default system-level

Alias set.

 

Difference between Super User and Sysadmin


Most of the budding Documentum developers get confused about the differences between a Super User and a Sysadmin. Though I had mentioned these points on my Documentum Security notes PDF file, I feel this needs a separate entry here. So just listing few important privileges of Sysadmin and Super User here. This list is not exhaustive but I guess I have most of it here, if you feel that I missed some important please feel free to add it as a comment.

Sysadmin

  • Create, alter, and drop users and groups
  • Create, modify, and delete system-level ACLs
  • Grant and revoke Create Type, Create Cabinet, and Create Group privileges
  • Create types, cabinets, and printers
  • Manipulate workflows or work items, regardless of ownership
  • Manage any object’s lifecycle
  • Set the a_full_text attribute

 The Sysadmin privilege does not override object-level permissions

 Super User

  • Perform all the functions of a user with Sysadmin privileges
  • Unlock objects in the repository
  • Modify or drop another user’s user-defined object type
  • Create subtypes that have no supertype
  • Register and unregister another user’s tables
  • Select from any underlying RDBMS table regardless of whether it is registered or not
  • Modify or remove another user’s groups or private ACLs
  • Create, modify, or remove system ACLs
  • Grant and revoke Superuser and Sysadmin privileges
  • Grant and revoke extended privileges
  • View audit trail entries

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Federation in Documentum


Federation is one among the most common distributed Documentum model. This means multiple Documentum repositories run as a federation. There will be a Governing repository and multiple member repositories in this model. Lets try to find out more about Federation

 

Take this typical scenario A Major Pharmaceutical Company ABC Corporation has multiple research centers and production plants across the glob and they have multiple Documentum repositories used for storing various information. A user logged into a corporate application needs to fetch documents from these various repositories in a Single session. Each repository in this scenario should have same set of users, groups and ACL for this architecture to work, manually managing these kind of scenario is trouble some and error prone.

 

Now lets see what a federation can do to make it less complex.

As I mentioned above Federations consists of Governing and Member repositories all the changes that has been made to global users and groups and external ACLS in the governing repository are automatically reproduced in the member Repository.

 

Requirements for Federation

·         Object types definition should be same in the all participating repositories.

·         User and group definition should be same in all participating repositories.

·         The server on which governing repository runs must project to the connection brokers at the servers where member repository runs

·         The server on which member repositories runs must project to the connection brokers at the servers where governing repository runs

·         If any of the participating Content Servers are with trusted server licenses Either
The servers should be configured to listen on both secure and native port or
The secure connection default for clients allows the clients to request a connection on a native or secure port

 

Few Bullet points about Federation

·         Any alteration done to any of the object type will not be automatically pushed to the participating repositories

·         Only users or groups marked as Global while creating them will be pushed / synchronized with participating repositories

·         The users those are part of any object types that are extended from dm_user will not automatically pushed. This will happen only if you specify this type in the Federation configuration.

·         Each repositories can be part of a single federation

·         A federation may contain different Content Server versions

·         A federation may contain a mix of trusted and non-trusted Content Servers.

 

 Download this Study Note (PDF)

Object Relationships in Documentum


Objects in the Documentum repository can be associated with Relationships. Lets explore the basics of Object Relationships here. There are 2 major object types that you need to know in

1) dm_relation_typeThis defines a relation, means this object type holds the information about the relation like its name, security type, parent type, child type etc. We will get into the details of this soon. User must have SysAdmin or Super User privileges to create object of this type. All the objects of this type will have r_object_id starting with 38

2) dm_relation This defines each individual relationship between the objects. Means this type has ID’s of the both parent and child object which makes the relation, the name of the relation etc. All the objects of this type will have r_object_id starting with 37

Now lest see the attributes of each object type and understand what each attributes is meant for and how these objects are related.

Lets list the attributes of type dm_relation_type

Name

Info Description
relation_name Char (32) Single Name of the relation, This must be a Unique name.
security_type Char (10) Single This defines who can add, delete, drop or modify a relationship. The possible values are SYSTEM
PARENTCHILDNONE(I will explain this in detail below)
parent_type Char (32) Single The valid object type of parent in this relationship
child_type Char (32) Single The valid object type of child in this relationship
description Char (250) Single Description of the relationship (User defined)
direction_kind Integer Single The Direction of the relation There are 3 Possible values for it. And they are
0 – This relation is parent to child
1 – This relation is child to parent
2 – This relation is bidirectional (means these objects are siblings)
The default value is always 0
integrity_kind Integer Single This determines the referential integrity of this relation. There are 3 Possible values for it. And they are
0 – Allow Delete
1 – Disallow delete
2 – Cascade Delete (This means when a user deletes an object participating in a relationship instance, Server will also destroy the participating partner in the relationship)
The default value is always 0
parent_child_label Char (255) Repeating User defined name for the parent child relationship
child_parent_label Char (255) Repeating User defined name for the child to parent relationship
permanent_link Boolean Single This defines what happens to the relation when the parent is copied or versioned.
If set to True relation is maintained with new parent object.If set false the relation is not maintained. The Default value is False
copy_child Integer Single Specifies whether to copy the child in a relationship when the parent is copied and permanent_link is True. . There are 2 Possible values for it. And they are
0 – Do not copy Child
1 – Copy Child
a_controlling_kind Char (32) Single This indicates whether relationships of this type are created by users or internally.

Lets list the attributes of type dm_relation

 

Name

Info Description
relation_name Char (32) Single Name of the relation that’s specified for the dm_relation_type object
parent_id ID Single ID of the parent object
child_id ID Single ID of the child object.
child_label Char (32) Single Optional version label of the child object. If this value is provided then I_chronicle_id of the object should be given as the id of the child in the child_id attribute.
permanent_link Boolean Single <Deprecated>
order_no Integer Single Not used, but can be used for custom purpose
effective_date Date Single Not used, but can be used for custom purpose
expiration_date Date Single Not used, but can be used for custom purpose
description Char (255) Single Description of the relationship (User defined)

 

The relation between dm_relation_type and dm_relation type objects is illustrated below

Relation Dig-1

Few bullets points about dm_relation and dm_relation_type

  1. Niether dm_relation nor dm_relation_Tupe can be versioned

  2. Object level security (ACL) cannot be set on these object types

  3. You cannot delete a dm_relation_type object if any of the dm_relation with its relation_name exists.

  4. You need super user privileges to delete a dm_relation_type object

  5. Destroying a dm_relation object does not destroy the parent or child objects.

  6. When you destroy an object all the dm_relation associated with that object also gets deleted.

Security and Relations

 

When we saw the attributes of dm_relation_type object I had mentioned about security_type. Lets see this in detail. As mentioned above security_type defines who can add, delete, drop or modify an object of dm_relation object, which has a relation name that of the relation_name in the dm_relation_type. Lets see what the individual possible values means here

 

  1. SYSTEM
    This means only SuperUsers and SysAdmins can create, edit or delete a relation with the relation_name in this type. This does not prevent an owner of an object from destroying an object that participates in the relationship. When a Objectis destroyed content server also destroys all relation objects associated with the object. The owner of that Object is not required to be a superuser or system administrator.
  2. PARENT
    This means create, delete or edit a Relation will depend upon the users permissions on the parent object. I.e. if the object that’s getting related is of object type dm_sysobject or its child user should at least have RELATE permission.
  3. CHILD
    This means create, delete or edit a Relation will depend upon the users permissions on the Child object. I.e. if the object that’s getting related is of object type dm_sysobject or its child user should at least have RELATE permission.
  4. NONE
    This means Any user can create, delete or edit a Relation of this type.

Download this Study Note (PDF)

Virtual Documents in Documentum


What is a Virtual Document

Simplistically speaking Virtual document is a document that can contain another documents.

After reading the above statement first question that might arise to all is if it can contain documents how is it different from a folder?

Let me make few bullet points about Virtual Document here, which will clear most of the confusions that you might have about virtual documents.

 

· A Virtual Document is a Document which can contain the type or the sub type of SysObjects with an exception given below

· A Virtual Document cannot contain any folders or cabinets, or any sub types of these.

· A Virtual Document object may or may not have a content (dmr_content) attached to it but a folder or a cabinet will never have any content attached to it. Though most of the time a Virtual Document might not be having a Content file attached to it.

· Any Object type that extents from SysObject can be converted as a Virtual Document. The Attribute r_is_virtual_doc (integer not a Boolean) of SysObject determines whether that object is a virtual document or not. If the value is 1 then it’s a Virtual document. If its value is 0 and the property r_link_cnt value is not higher than 0 then that object is not a Virtual Document
The Content Server Fundamental is misleading in this aspect, Page number 199 of guide says it’s a Boolean property but in reality its not

· The Contents of the Virtual document can be of different object types.

· The Virtual Documents can be versioned and managed in the same way as you do with any other objects.

 

Components and Containment, the elements of Virtual Document

 

The Virtual documents are composed of various components, each components are nothing but individual objects. In other sense a component is a child of a Virtual Document. The containment objects (dmr_containtment) stores the information about the individual components of a Virtual Document. Every time when you add a new component to a virtual document a new dmr_containtment object will be created.

 

Now lets see the attributes of a dmr_containment object. This will give you a clear idea about what it does.

 

 

Name Info Description
parent_id ID – Single Object ID of the object that directly contains the component.
component_id ID – Single The Object Id of the Initial Object of the component. (I_chronicle_id). If the object has no versions, then its object ID and chronicle ID are the same.
copy_child Integer – Single Defines what a client should when the document containing the component is copied.
Possible Values Meaning
0 The decision whether to copy or reference the component is left to the user when the document is copied
1 When the document is copied, the component is referenced In the new copy rather than actually copied
2 When the document is copied, the component is also copied
follow_assembly Boolean – Single If set to TRUE, directs the system to resolve a component using the component’s assembly
i_partition Integer – Single Not Currently used
order_no Double -Single Number representing the component’s position within the components of the virtual document identified by parent_id
a_contain_desc string(255) Single User-defined. Used by clients to manage XML documents
a_contain_type string(255) Single User-defined. Used by clients to manage XML documents
use_node_ver_label Boolean – Single If set to TRUE for early-bound components, the server uses the early-bound symbolic label to resolve late-bound descendants of the component during assembly
Version_label string(32) Single Version label for the component.

 

 

Now as you had seen the dmr_containment object attributes lets get into more details of Virtual Documents.

The component can be associated with Virtual documents in 2 ways with respect to its versions

You can either associate a particular version of component with the virtual document or you can attach the entire version tree of the component with Virtual document.

 

If you attach the entire version of a document you have a choice of selecting the version of component to attach with virtual document at the time of assembling a virtual document.

Another important part of the Virtual document is the order of components in the Virtual Document; Content Server manages this ordering by default by adding for removing numbers while adding or removing components. If you wish do this part you can do it manually too.

 

Component referential integrity

The Boolean property compound_integrity of server configuration object dm_server_config manage the referential integrity of virtual document. If this attribute is set to true the content server will not allow deleting an object, which is contained in a Virtual Document. This attribute is set to true by default. You have to have minimum SysAdmin privileges to change this value.

If this attribute is set to false one can destroy the components of an unfrozen Virtual Documents. In any case you can never destroy components of a frozen virtual document.

 

Assembly, Conditional Assembly and Snapshots

Selecting the set of components for a Virtual document for a operation is known as Assembly, Conditional assembly allows the user to choose to include all components or some of them. As mentioned above if the entire versions of a component we can choose which all documents and also which versions of document to be included in the assembly.

 

A snapshot is the state of a Virtual document at the time when it was taken. This means it has the components that were selected during the creation of the snapshot. Each Snapshot is saved in repository as an assembly (dm_assembly) object.

Assembly objects are created when a user creates an assembly, a snapshot of the virtual document at particular point in time. Users must have at least Version permission for the object identified in the book_id property to modify an assembly object.

 

Binding a component (Early and Late)

Attaching a component to a Virtual Document is known as binding. There are 2 ways of binding a component to Virtual Document. They are Early binding and Late Binding

1) Early Binding
If you bind a specific version of a Component to the Virtual Document when you create a virtual document then it’s known as Early Binding. This makes sure that all the snapshots of virtual document have the same version of the component.
Links – Absolute and Symbolic

     Absolute Link

Before getting into Absolute links let’s see what an implicit version label is? An Implicit version label is the version label assigned to a document when you version by the content server. An implicit version label of the version of a document remains as it till that version is destroyed. Using an implicit version label to link component with a Virtual Document creates an Absolute link between component and Virtual Document.

     Symbolic Link

Symbolic version label is the version label, which are user –defined. This allows a user to give meaningful labels to a document. This can be moved from one version to another of a object.

When you use this type of linking no matter what the Virtual Document will have component, which has the specified symbolic version label. E.g. You define a Virtual Document to have a component which has a version label Published, the Virtual document will always have the published version of the component.

2) Late Binding
When you don’t specify a version label of a component when u add it to a virtual document its known as late binding. In this case the Content server attach the entire version tree of the specified component to the virtual document. And when you assemble the document you specify which version of component you should use.

Freezing and Unfreezing a Virtual Document.

Frozen Virtual Documents are virtual documents, which are immutable. Once you make a Virtual Document or a snapshot frozen you cannot change or delete any attributes of the virtual document and you can also not add or remove components of virtual document. You can explicitly make a Virtual Document immutable by calling IDfSysObject.freeze()

When you call the freeze () r_immutable_flag will be set to true by content server also r_frozen_flag will also be set to true by the content server.

 

Calling IDfSysObject.unfreeze() on a frozen virtual document unfreezes the Virtual Document and make it modifiable again. In that case the content server sets the above-mentioned flags to false.

 

Virtual Document related DQLS

Consider this model All the queries explained below will be based on this model

VirtualDocumentIllustration1

To find all direct components in this Virtual document SELECT ‘object_name’ in dm_sysobject IN DOCUMENT ID (‘r_object_id_of_virtual_document’)

This will returns the following in the exact same order VirtualDocument, Component1, Component2 and Component3 (VirtualDocument is returned because Virtual Document itself is considered as a Component)

 

To Filter Object Types in the above Query

SELECT r_object_id in dm_document IN DOCUMENT ID (‘r_object_id_of_virtual_document’)

This will return only dm_documents in the Virtual Document specified

Usage of DESCENT

Descent is used to return all components that contained in a virtual document.

SELECT ‘object_name’ in dm_sysobject IN DOCUMENT ID (‘r_object_id_of_virtual_document’) DESCENT

This returns the components in the following order

VirtualDocument, Component1, Child1, Child2, Child3, Component2, Child4, Child5, Component3, Child6,

Use the IN DOCUMENT clause with the ID scalar function to identify a particular virtual document in the query. The keyword DESCEND searches the virtual document’s full hierarchy.

Usage of VERSION

The VERSION Keyword finds the components of a specific version of a virtual document.

 

SELECT ‘object_name’ in dm_sysobject IN DOCUMENT ID (‘r_object_id_of_virtual_document’) VERSION 1.1

 

 

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Renditions in Documentum


A couple of days ago someone had asked me about Renditions in Documentum, Let me try to explain very briefly what renditions are.

Renditions are Representations of a Document in a different format.  In other ways, the only difference between a document and its rendition is only its format.   When you create a document in Documentum you specify the file format for that object, this file format is the Original format of that object.  The renditions of this object have the same properties of the original format object but it’s in a different format. These renditions are made either using Documentum Media Transformation Service or the supported Converters.    

The Converters are basically for Transform one type of graphic image to another type (e.g.: TIFF to JPG) or one-word processing format to another word processing format (e.g.: PDF to MSWord). There are few converters that come with the Content server, you can either buy or make your own custom converters. I am not getting into details of Converters here.

When you request for a rendition that uses converters Content Server creates and manages the Renditions automatically. You can also add renditions manually.
If you wanted to add renditions manually you can create the rendition by your own means and use addRendition() IDfSysObject interface.
For removing a rendition use removeRenditon() of the same IdfSysObject interface.
You have to have at least write permission to remove rendition of a Document.   

Installation Issues of Documentum 6 SP1 Content Server on AIX


We had done a D6 SP1 installation few days ago and ran into some issues, I thought I will share my expereince with you all so that you know the issues that you may face during the installation of content server on AIX.

 As we stared with the installation of Content Server on our AIX system (5.3) we were hit with the following error

“The /tmp filesystem needs 1GB where it has 0 GB Available”  We had more than 1 GB space in both /var/tmp and /tmp.

During this I found an interesting thing that even the D6 Installer guide has lots of typos in it. It says /tmp some place then someother place it says /temp should have 1 GB  free space !!!!

If you are hit with this issue there is a work around,  You have to add the tmp directory location as parameter to the installer.  

That means you have to run the installer with following command line

serverAixSuiteSetup.bin -is:tempdir TMP_DIR

Where TMP_DIR should point your tmp directory which has more than 1 GB Space.

Another interesting issue is Though the D6 Installer guide in page number 143 says that if you run dm_launch_server_config_program.sh it will set the environment variables such as LIBPATH etc that doesnt really do that. So if you are installing D6 CS on AIX after completing the installtion make sure sure that you edit the profile of install owner and add these paths to it

Happy Installing !!!