How does DOCUMENTUM reads and writes to database

I have two oracle and one SQL Server 2000 databases and we are planning to migrate all the three databases on to SQL Server 2005 which are installed separately on a different machine, these databases are part of our existing content management system which has been built by a third party application provider. We are planning to move the entire content management system to documentum and I have a few questions. Please can you help.

1. Wanted to know as to whether Documentum will be able to read/write from these existing databases. i.e, two database from oracle and one from sql server 2005.

2. How will the documentum read / write to and from the external databases?

3. What are the points which needs to be taken care in the above scenario.

Thanks for your suggestions/advice in advance

Regards,

Sandeep

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Comments

clonak

Hi there iDeep:

I have moved your database read and write question over to the Developer Community. Your inquiry is more of a deep dive technical question for the Developers.

The Documentum Community is focused on the a line of business user groups that are a bit less detailed server type of questions.

We thank you for your participation and post!

Best regards,

Kelly

ukdavo

This sounds like a typical ECM/CMS migration.

1. Export the content and metadata from the old system using an off the shelf tool if one exists or a custom developed program (depending on the what the old system is you may need to either run some SQL scripts or develop an export routine using an API). If the source system is relatively well known then you should be able to find export tools for it.

2. Massage the data to a format that will accomodate the import process/target repository.- this may include data mapping, data consolidation, etc.

3. Import the content and metadata to Documentum using an off the shelf tool (e.g. Crown Buldoser, ECM Import Manager, etc) or develop a custom import program (pretty straightforward using the Documentum Foundation Classes Java API). You may need to configure the Documentum system with object type definitions, full text indexing, file formats, locales, etc before initiating with the import.

You'll probably need to normalise the data at one of the above steps.

Documentum utilises a specific (and complex!) database schema. You can't just point it at any old database schema. Access to Documentum repositories is normally done through the aforementioned DFC API which handles all the complex object relational mapping. Direct database access is not supported.

This probably sounds a bit daunting but its bread and butter work for most Documentum consultants. If you're looking for assistance with this you could hire a contractor, speak to EMC or to one of their partners (including my employers).

Regards

rsnsandeep

Thanks for the pointers. Really appreciate it.