Different between Application Builder & Composer?

shirley

Hello All:

I want to know what differents between Application Builder & Composer.
And anything about DAM.I want to know whether the whole frame or layout of DAM can be changed or not.I just want to do some thing about audio and video transfer during different formats. Does someone give me some advice whether I develop on DAM or just combine DFC library  with struts and spring to achieve my purpose in one or two month.

Thanks a bunch .

                                                                         Sincerely   Shirlehy                              

david.matheson

Hi, Shirley.  Here's a brief response to your questions:

Application Builder is what was used pre-D6 to create types, attributes, lifecycles, etc. and group these artifacts (through docapps) and install them to various content repositories (or docbases, as they used to be called).  It was fine, and did a lot, but it had drawbacks.  Installing the docapps was a mainly manual task (there were undocumented Ant tasks for scripting, but I don't think many people used them), and version control was difficult.  You could archive the docapps, but you would then treat them as binary blobs, storing many copies of what was likely only marginally different.  Comparisons between versions was impossible.

Composer tries to address these shortcomings, bringing a format for artifacts that can be stored in source control and scripting interfaces (headless Composer) for automating the installation of Documentum Archives (DAR, the replacement for docapps).  It's also Eclipse-based, so it provides an interface which is familiar for many Java developers.  Check the Quickstart Guide to find out more.

You can change DAM through WDK customizations, but it may be difficult to get rid of the whole frame layout.  You can look at Media Workspace, which is an alternative interface to DAM.  You can throw out WDK and write your own custom interface which interacts with the content repository with DAM support added.  You can base this on DFC or the new DFS layer, which is a web-service API for Documentum.  Either way, you can combine this with whatever web development framework that you are comfortable with (Struts + Spring, Tapestry, etc.).  Extensibility and future upgrade paths will guide whether you want to use an out-of-the-box approach, or a series of custom applications.  Have fun!