Developer Edition: Can we use Process Builder, Forms Builder, etc?

Hello,

As part of an organization that is making a massive effort towards Documentum, we have stumbled across an issue that we would appreciate some advice on. The organization has set up a fully licensed production server using the official "non-Developer-edition" versions of Documentum's product line. Setting up the server was not particularly easy as I hear it - I am one of the leaders in the development team, not the administration team - and so the organization is justifiably concerned with '**** things up' in production.

Of course, on the development side of things, we are almost sure to run into problems as part of our learning curve, so we are looking into how we can easily set up test servers.

That brings us to the Developer Edition of Content Server: we see that it is available, and we are ready to start allocating reasonably powerful machines to host it, but we were wondering one thing: with our licensed copies of Process Builder, Forms Builder, and so on... can we access the test servers we set up? In other words, does the Developer Edition support connections to it from the toolset that we have purchased from EMC, or is the Developer Edition somehow 'dumbed down' to not support this? We don't want to waste time trying to do something that has been architected not to work from the get-go.

Another question, while we're at it, is there anyway to use Taskspace with Documentum Developer Edition? I'm pretty sure the answer will be no, but if anyone can verify that, wonderful.

Thanks in advance,

Ahmed

Find more posts tagged with

Documentum

Comments

lastnitescurry

Hi,

I'm a developer so my answer does not have anything about licences in it....

Out of the box, Documentum is very straight forward to setup, even more so on Windows boxes.

I would suggest

* get VMware Workstation or other virutal mahine products.

* get two of your developers ( who like the admin side of things ) to build two development machines. Why two, because its good to have backup knowledge and the best knowledge is by doing. Also what one may miss the other other may catch

* Install the same database software as production

* Install the same content server as production

** Ideally you should use the same software install paths as production.

* Install your application server (tomcat is fine for development)

* Install your web apps onto application server

At this point you should have at least one clean development systems, Make a backup of the virtual PC. If using vmware, you could take a snapshot.

Configurations are done with Composer (which is based on Eclipse) and also installed with Composer.

Initally your team will probably install changes by hand, but it is possible to script the install of configurations into a repository. See "Chapter 17 Running headless Eclipse" at end of Composer User Guide for ant tasks to build and install projects.

Currently I use a mix of batch files and ant scripts to install my projects configurations. As the Content Server already has the tools I need Composer, dmbasic, IAPI & IDQL. Therfore I have it as a requirement that the install is done from Content Server as the "install owner". Usually I am adding jars to the Java Method Server also so eaiser to do all in one place

Composer projects files are plain text (XML) files so they are very easy to store in a source code control system,

fyi.. my developer tool set is

svn, trac, CruiseControl, ant, Eclipse, tomcat,

Composer, IAPI32, IDQL32, dmbasic

Best of luck

Brian

DCTM_Guru

"can we access the test servers we set up? In other words, does the Developer Edition support connections to it from the toolset that we have purchased from EMC, or is the Developer Edition somehow 'dumbed down' to not support this?"

- Developer Edition was created to expedite the deployment of the various major components of Documentum from a developers perspective. This involves built-in database, some default settings, etc. To the best of my knowledge, it is NOT a dumbed down version of software. Albeit, I have seen older posts where users where asking to change the name of the repository to something else. You should be able connect other components to content server.

"Another question, while we're at it, is there anyway to use Taskspace with Documentum Developer Edition? I'm pretty sure the answer will be no, but if anyone can verify that, wonderful."

- AFAIK - no. TaskSpace is not a component that has been released as Dev Ed.

- From my perspective, Dev Ed is fine for someone learning Documentum at home. If you are planning to support Documentum development from an organizational perspective, following Brian's suggestions is a good start.

trana1

Hi Ahmed,

As far as I can see, the developer edition is not a dumb down version. The 2 key differences to be aware of: 1). It's bundled with SQL Server Express, 2). It's bundled with Lucene for full-text index instead of FAST.

Other than that, you should have no limitations connecting other products to the developer edition content server.

For Forms Builder and Process Builder, make sure to run the Process Engine installer on the developer edition content server. This installs the Forms Builder and BPM dar files necessary for these tools.

For TaskSpace, just follow the TaskSpace install guide. Make sure to install the TaskSpace dar file on the content server you want to connect to.

If you are an existing customer with access to xCP --- Forms Builder, Process Builder, Process Integrator, TaskSpace, and BAM --- check out the one-click installer available on EMC download site. It's called "Documentum xCelerated Composition Platform Developer Edition". This package is built on top of the developer edition and includes all the tools listed above. See screenshot below:

DCTM_Guru

Just to reiterate what trana1 has stated, the xCP Developer Edition is NOT a freely available distribution. It is only available to existing customers of xCP.

aabdallah

Thanks for the helpful answers. We spent the last few days going through the Technical Foundations documentation, and also setting up a development server based on the development edition of Documentum Content Server. Our production server is running the licensed commercial version and we are very leery of doing anything on it while we are learning. We have an official test server set up, but senior management is understandably concerned that having a single test environment is not enough - hence a push to build a third tier, a development server.

Since we are a paying customer of EMC, we also have access to Powerlink, so we downloaded "Process Engine" from the evaluation software in order to connect to our new development server using our licensed "Process Builder" apps. We were wondering though: when will the license expire for the trial version? It is a bit frustrating to only have licensed versions of all the tools on our production server, but we are open to trial software solutions for our development environment. We just want to know how long the trial versions can take us before going to senior management and asking for additional resources to set up more powerful development servers... (right now running on 4Gb and it's kind of slow, and that's without putting any other apps on there such as Taskspace.)

Based on some information we read on the Documentum download site, we think it's 30 days, but we're not sure...

Oh we're assuming that once we have Taskspace on there too, it will all depend on the license duration for the trial version of "Process Engine" - is that true? Or are there different licenses for things like Taskspace, Process Builder, Forms Builder (both prerequisites for Taskspace)...?

Any information will be most helpful.

thanks,

Ahmed

DCTM_Guru

"It is a bit frustrating to only have licensed versions of all the tools on our production server, but we are open to trial software solutions for our development environment."

Speak to your EMC sales rep. You may be able to use the prod licenses in dev environment. I know you need separate licenses for QA/Test, but DEV may be a different story.