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Survey sez...

smigster

I'm curious about the "popularity" of some TeamSite features. If a significant number of people chime in I will gladly summarize and recapitulate the results.

Who is using CCI URLs?

Who is using Custom DTDs in Templating?

Who is using Nested Workflows?

Who is using DataDeploy? And DAS?

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Comments

Migrateduser

Out of curiosity, what's the point? Do you work for Interwoven or is this for your own purpose?

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

smigster

I do not work for Interwoven.

RE: CCI URLs... I just tried to use them in an effort to provide a navigation aid for my users to save a lot of clicks while drilling down through a deep and wide templatedata structure. Code that worked on NT failed in a TS5.5.2/Solaris environment and I've had a case open for 7 days without resolution. So, I was wondering if CCI URLs were little used and, hence, something "exotic" to tech support.

RE: Custom DTDs... I've never encountered anyone who has used them, have been "unofficially" dissuaded from using them by IW folks, and have gakked when I've tried to grok the docs. BUT: it sure seems like it would be nice to use a "native" format when interfacing to other apps instead of having to convert the standard TS DCR format.

RE: DataDeploy and DAS... About a year and a half ago I tried very hard, unsuccessfully, to get any info/references out of IW regarding non-trivial implementations of DD/DAS. All I ever hear from other IW-users is how horrible DD is and, from first-hand experience about two years ago, seeing DAS bring a big Solaris server to its knees before failing. I'm about to embark on another DB-oriented app and wonder if DD/DAS is worth looking into.

RE: Nested Workflows... I've never worked with them and remember that there was a seemingly intractable problem with using them when they were first introduced. Just trying to get an update from the field...

I've got a lot more questions about what really works in TeamSite and about developers Best Practices but those were my Top Four.

Migrateduser

Fair enough, but in my humble opinion, a survey on DevNet won't have much weight as far as Interwoven is concerned. I would recommend trying your hardest to attend the Focus Group sessions being held in March (and again prior to the GearUp conference in the Octoberish timeframe), assuming you were invited. If you weren't invited, contact Interwoven to get an invitation. It's in these sessions that I think Interwoven really listens to customer gripes and acts on them. I am not so sure that DevNet is as good of a forum to make a difference in how the product is "enhanced" in the future. That's just my opinion.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

We are planning on using CCI links for everything - all workflow emails, entry to CMS from Portal, etc. But they are not the Interwoven CCI links, which tend to suck, but custom CCI links such as to JSP pages that do the right thing. Typically these take ownership of the appropriate workflow task, lock the files to the user taking ownership (assuming it's not a readonly task), then redirect to some other link. They also do better error control, and the GUI is nicer (we can do custom links to job history or whatever else we want). Supposedly there are some significant licensing advantages to using CCI links over the TeamSite UI, and obviously training would be reduced.

There was something interesting on I think slashdot recently about how DTDs are becoming obsolete, that XML Schema is the way to go. M$ has a tool that will generate an XML schema for you if you give it some sample XML, which I am hoping we can implement and validate against for our custom XML config files. I really wouldn't know much about either, except that DTDs can be pretty hard to read. Sometimes the DTD is more helpful than the docs, for constructing workflows for instance. I don't use custom DTDs, but I have enhanced templating.cfg - each <template> element has an autogen attribute that indicates whether workflow should automatically generate output files using that template.

I don't use nested workflows. I don't really see how they would help, other than that one problem with workflows is that each task consumes resources, so those resources could be freed when the nested workflow completes which could aid performance. Another would be sharing the same sequence of tasks to multiple workflows, but there are technically better ways to do that if the resources weren't a problem.

I always steer customers away from DataDeploy. As an Interwoven consulting partner it bit me in the **** too many times. I have seen large, apparently successful implementations, but there were so many issues with upgrades, etc. Anyway I would rather write database logic in a real language where I have full control than in some config file product that I have to read and train on. Maybe it's just been too long since I looked at it. I think DataDeploy is a poor attempt to solve an impossible problem of any to any data translation - and a way to get around the architectural flaw of using a filesystem for the repository instead of a database. But it would seem to make the issue worse, since instead of templated content existing in the DCR and output files in each workarea, with DAS it is in any number of database tables as well. This would seem to be a synchronization and performance problem, but I've never really thought about it since it was blue screening NT servers and such the last time I tried to work with it. I believe they give it away for free and I assume there is a reason for that (in some cases you get what you pay for).

OpenDeploy works.
FormAPI works.
TeamSite GUI doesn't work.
Interwoven Support frequently doesn't work.
Upgrades tend to cause a lot of work.

Would love to hear the other questions. In my opinion Perl is not a best practice for any enterprise-class application (although it does seem to work for this DevNet - but notice no TeamSite Templating technology behind it...).

May the flames begin.

laj1

"In my opinion Perl is not a best practice for any enterprise-class application"

Why not?

As an aside, Perl is not a "best practice."
Perl is a programming language. In fact,
Perl is the Swiss Army Chainsaw of programming languages.

Len.

Len Jaffe
My Heart Is A Flower

Migrateduser

I think it leads to poor programming practice.

laj1

"I think it leads to poor programming practice."

I've heard that before.

I always thought that undisciplined approaches to programming lead to
bad programming practices.

That would be like me blaming the Big Mac for being fattening,
rather than myself for being unable to order a salad.

Len.

Len Jaffe
My Heart Is A Flower
Update your DevNet profile - let us know who you are!

smigster

I'm not trying to "enhance" the product in any way... just trying to get a feel from DevNet folks as to what they're using and recommending (and NOT using).

Now that we've gotten the niceties out of the way, Smitty77, could you comment on my Four du Jour? Thanks.

Edited by smigster on 02/11/03 01:47 PM (server time).

smigster

Thanks, John, for the rich reply. I was almost ROF&LOL with your addendum of things that work and don't. By the way, regarding OpenDeploy: there are times in my shop when it turns into OpenDestroy (map_secondary_to_primary_gid=yes -AND- do_deletes).

I wonder if the rumored Major Change to Templating will enable Industry Standard and Roll-Your-Own XML formats via XML schema. I hope so.

Migrateduser

>Who is using CCI URLs?

Using them to provide 'on site' quicklinks for adding/editing/deleting content items. This functionality totally blew our admin users away; and they instantly became much more pro-Teamsite.

>Who is using Custom DTDs in Templating?
Umm, i'm either too stupid or too busy.

>Who is using Nested Workflows?
See above :-)

>Who is using DataDeploy? And DAS?
I think it's just me who uses Datadeploy :-); but not DAS.
Well actually it does sometimes feel that I'm breaking new ground by using -
mycustomworkflow->mycustomperl->iwdd.ipl->mycustommssqldatabase

Jeremy

I have been working on various projects, each one requiring different parts of Teamsite.
>>Who is using CCI URLs?
The current project I am on is utilising this feature - first time I am seeing it done.

>>Who is using Custom DTDs in Templating?
Never even thought of that and don't know anyone who has!

>>Who is using Nested Workflows?
This project we are going to be using Nested WF's. We are also splitting WF's up so that one entire WF is made up of about 5 mini WF's. The last task of each mini WF is to instantiate and invoke the next mini WF that is required. All done with scripting.

>>Who is using DataDeploy? And DAS?
We wrote our own Perl: Smiley Very Happy

BI to deploy to the database on this project, but I have worked on one project where DAS was used. Turned out to be a real mess with lots of custom coding to debug and prevent it falling over randomly!

Hope that is useful.

Migrateduser

Sure...

>>Who is using CCI URLs?
I use these links, but I am not at all happy with how they work. I was promised that CCI would allow people outside of the TeamSite server to act on workflow tasks. I don't see CCI links, as they are today, providing all that much convenience.

>>Who is using Custom DTDs in Templating?
We do not use Templating at all.

>>Who is using Nested Workflows?
No need for this yet, but I have developed nested workflows for Interwoven the old fashioned way. I think it's a good thing to have available, but there is no documentation provided, so I would be wary of even trying to delve into it at the moment. I think the worst thing about this product is the lack of solid documentation.

>>Who is using DataDeploy? And DAS?
Neither.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Adam Stoller

I was promised that CCI would allow people outside of the TeamSite server to act on workflow tasks

By "outside the TeamSite server" - you mean non-licensed users?

Out of curiosity if nothing else, when/who promised this to you?

--fish
(Interwoven Senior Technical Consultant)

Migrateduser

Yes, non-TeamSite users. It was our regional consulting manager who promised us this. Once he told us this (we were running on 4.2.1 at the time and just learning about the features of 5.5.x) we advertised it to one of our more skeptical customers, who thought this great CCI thing would really help them out if they could implement it in a workflow. Then we find out only TeamSite users can really use the CCI links. That was not a fun time explaining to the customers that we couldn't do what we said we could. Luckily, I eventually figured out how to do the same thing in another way - I can now embed links into emails that will allow non-TeamSite users to interact with workflow tasks.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

Smigster, you still out there? Can you explain this comment:

> regarding OpenDeploy: there are times in my shop when it turns into OpenDestroy (map_secondary_to_primary_gid=yes -AND- do_deletes).

We are about to enable this flag and wondering what the impact will be.

gzevin

Just confirming to what Dave is saying - most of my clients have the same impression, created by IWOV sales - that CCIs will let anybody to use teaSite without having to have an account and being logged in !

Greg Zevin, Ph.D. Comp. Sc.
Independent Interwoven Consultant/Architect
Sydney, AU

Migrateduser

Take a look at the movie "Super Size Me"