Documentum Content Management Foundations

By Pawan Kumar

In Detail

This is a complete study guide including study material and practice questions to prepare for the EMC Proven Professional certification Exam E20-120. It can also serve Documentum beginners and practitioners as a handy guide and quick reference to the technical fundamentals that is fully up to date for Documentum 5.3. Beginners are introduced to concepts in a logical manner while practitioners can use it as a reference to jump to relevant concepts directly.

EMC Documentum is a leading enterprise content management technology platform that helps enterprises to streamline the capture, processing, and distribution of business information including documents, records, e-mails, web content, images, reports, and digital assets. It can also automate entire business processes in accordance with business rules.

EMC Proven Professional is an exam-based certification program, which introduced a new EMC Proven Content Management Application Developer (EMCAD) track in early 2007. The first exam in this track is Content Management Foundations (CMF) Associate-level Exam, with exam code E20-120, which tests knowledge about technical fundamentals of Documentum. This book is a study guide to help you prepare for this exam with hundreds of practice questions and an efficient exam-preparation strategy.

In this book, we will teach you the fundamentals of Documentum while effectually training you for the E20-120 exam.

Approach

This book discusses all the topics from the E20-120 Content Management Foundations exam syllabus and augments each topic with illustrated examples and practice questions. Two comprehensive full-length practice tests build the confidence needed to tackle the real exam successfully. By providing coherent, detailed, exam-focussed study material scrutinized by technical reviewers and plentiful practice questions this book goes far beyond dm-cram, at a fraction of the cost of EMC Training.

Who this book is for

This book is targeted at beginner and intermediate-level Documentum developers and professionals interested in learning the technical fundamentals of Documentum. The book focuses on preparing for the E20-120 exam, which makes it an ideal study guide for those taking the EMC Proven Professional Associate Level Certification in content management.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Release date: Jun 13, 2007
• ISBN: 9781847192417

Pawan Kumar

Pawan Kumar is a Technical Architect with current expertise in Enterprise Content Management with EMC Documentum. He has an MS in Computer Science from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi (India). Pawan has experience developing products as well as delivering business solutions on the Documentum platform and has created two products for this platform. He is intimately familiar with effective processes and tools for achieving business objectives through Documentum-based technology solutions. He has led and executed requirements and design workshops, architecture design, scoping, estimation, project planning, resource planning, technical design, software development, software testing, solution roll-out, and ongoing support for the deployed solutions. Pawan has been architecting, designing, and developing enterprise applications for ten years. He has developed software systems for financial services, healthcare, pharmaceutical, logistics, energy services, and retail industries. His expertise spans solution architecture, document management, system integration, web content management, business process management, imaging and input management, and custom application development. Currently, Pawan provides consulting and training services through doQuent (http://doquent.com), which was founded with the vision of enabling client success in content-related business initiatives. He also believes in giving back to the community. He founded the free online Documentum community dm_cram (http://dmcram.org), which is a test preparation resource for Documentum exams. He is also an active contributor to the Documentum-users Yahoo! User group, where Documentum community members seek help for their technical challenges. He can be reached at [e-mail].

Book preview

Table of Contents

Documentum Content Management Foundations

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgement

About the Reviewers

Preface

1. Fundamentals

1. ECM Basics

Content and Metadata

Repository

Content Server

Content Management Services

Process Management Services

Security Services

Distributed Services

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

2. Working with Content

Interacting with Content

Importing Content

Exporting Content

Checking Out

Checking In

Versioning

Branching

Formats

Renditions

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

3. Objects and Types

Objects

Object Types

Type Names and Property Names

Type Hierarchy

Object Persistence

Querying Objects

SELECT Query

Basics

WHERE Clause

UPDATE Query

DELETE Query

API

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

4. Architecture

Documentum Platform

Layered Architecture

Repository Layer

Content Services Layer

Component and Development Layer

Documentum Foundation Classes

Standards-Based APIs

Business Object Framework

Other Components

Application Layer

Integration Services

Communication Patterns

Key Components

Fundamental Communication Pattern

WDK Application Communication Pattern

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

2. Security

5. Users and Privileges

Documentum Security

Users

Authentication

Special Users

Authorization

Client Capability

Basic Privileges

Extended Privileges

User Management

Help—Some DQL Queries

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

06. Groups and Roles

Authorization

Groups

Group Management

Roles

Domain

Help—Some DQL Queries

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

07. Object Security

Security — A Recap

Object Permissions

Basic Permissions

Extended Permissions

Special Users

Object Owner

Managing Object Ownership

Superuser Permissions

Permission Sets (ACLs)

Resolving Permissions

Managing Permission Sets

Creating Permission Sets

Assigning Permission Sets

Folders and Permission Sets

Help—Some DQL Queries

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

3. User Interface

08. Searching

Locating Objects

Search Process

Simple Search

Search — without Full-Text Indexing

Search — with Full-Text Indexing

Advanced Search

Interacting with Results

Saving Searches

Search Preferences

Full-Text Indexing

Frequently Accessed Objects

Subscriptions

Shortcuts

Help—Some DQL Queries

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

4. Application Development

09. Custom Types

Custom Types

Managing Custom Types

Creating a Custom Type

Events for Types

Properties

Search Support for Properties

Displaying Properties

Validation

Value Assistance

Value Mapping

Modifying a Custom Type

Using Custom Types

Data Dictionary

Help—Some DQL Queries

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

10. DocApps

Documentum Customization

DocApps

Managing DocApps

Creating and Modifying DocApps

Archiving DocApps

Installing DocApps

Prerequisites

Installation Process

Help—Some DQL Queries

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

11. Workflows

Business Processes

Workflow Concepts

Workflows and Customization

Analysis

Modeling and Definition

Activities

Performers

Activity Transitions

Use

Modification

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

12. Lifecycles

Business Process and Content Management

Lifecycle Concepts

Lifecycles and Customization

Analysis

Modeling and Definition

States

State Transitions

Use

Modification

Help—Some DQL Queries

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

5. Advanced Concepts

13. Aliases

Customization—Reusability and Portability

Aliases

Alias Sets

Managing Alias Sets

Referencing Aliases

Resolving Aliases

Workflow Alias Resolution

Default Sequence

Package Sequence

User Sequence

Resolution Process

Sysobject Alias Resolution

Permission Set Template Alias Resolution

Object with Lifecycle

Object without Lifecycle

Lifecycle Alias Set Resolution

Help—Some DQL Queries

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

14. Virtual Documents

Managing Content Hierarchically

Virtual Documents

Managing Virtual Documents

Creating Virtual Documents

Exploring a Virtual Document Structure

Modifying Virtual Documents

Virtual Documents—Versions

Help—Some DQL Queries

Documentum Product Notes

Checkpoint

Test Your Understanding

A. Practice Test 1

Instructions

Test

B. Practice Test 2

Instructions

Test

C. Answers

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Practice Test 1

Practice Test 2

Index

Documentum Content Management Foundations

Pawan Kumar

---

Documentum Content Management Foundations

Copyright © 2007 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: June 2007

Production Reference: 1310507

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.

ISBN 978-1-847192-40-0

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by www.visionwt.com

Credits

Author

Pawan Kumar

Reviewers

Gaurav Kathuria

Brian Williamson

Senior Acquisition Editor

Douglas Paterson

Development Editor

Nikhil Bangera

Technical Editor

Ved Prakash Jha

Editorial Manager

Dipali Chittar

Project Manager

Patricia Weir

Project Coordinator

Abhijeet Deobhakta

Indexer

Bhushan Pangaonkar

Proofreader

Chris Smith

Production Coordinators

Manjiri Nadkarni

Shantanu Zagade

Cover Designer

Shantanu Zagade

About the Author

Pawan Kumar is a Technical Architect with current expertise in Enterprise Content Management with EMC Documentum. His expertise spans solution architecture, document management, system integration, web content management, business process management, imaging and input management, and custom application development.

Pawan has experience developing products as well as delivering business solutions on the Documentum platform. He is intimately familiar with effective processes and tools for achieving business objectives through Documentum-based technology solutions. He has led and executed requirements and design workshops, architecture design, scoping, estimation, project planning, resource planning, technical design, software development, software testing, solution roll-out, and ongoing support for the deployed solutions. He has also created two products for the Documentum platform.

Pawan has been architecting, designing, and developing enterprise applications for ten years. He has developed software systems for financial services, healthcare, pharmaceutical, logistics, energy services, and retail industries.

Pawan has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi (India) and MS in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Currently, Pawan provides consulting and training services through doQuent (http://doquent.com), which was founded with the vision of enabling client success in content-related business initiatives. He also believes in giving back to the community. He founded the free online Documentum community dm_cram (http://dmcram.org), which is a test preparation resource for Documentum exams. He is also an active contributor to the documentum-users Yahoo! User group, where Documentum community members seek help for their technical challenges. He can be reached at .

Acknowledgement

I dedicate this book to my parents.

This book would not have been possible without the unrelenting support of my wife Rashmi. Working on this book also kept me away from my four-year old daughter Shreya, who often contended with me for using my laptop. My brother Ramesh has been my model of perseverance whenever I needed to keep going in the face of adversity.

I am immensely indebted to the technical reviewers Gaurav Kathuria and Brian Williamson, for the quality of the contents of this book. Both of them provided painstakingly detailed feedback, which helped improve the accuracy and suitability of the text. Gaurav is the author of Web Content Management with Documentum, the book that inspired me to write this one. I have worked with Brian in the past he is a brilliant Documentum architect and a WDK expert.

The entire Packt team working on this book has made the experience of writing my first book a thoroughly pleasant one. I would like to thank Douglas Paterson, Nikhil Bangera, Abhijeet Deobhakta, Patricia Weir, and everyone else who worked on this book behind the scenes.

I thank Armedia for giving me the opportunity to work with Documentum.

I thank my friends who have been exceptionally patient and understanding while I worked on this book. I particularly thank Sumitra Tyagi, Manmohan Singh, and Katie Leland for their unconditional support and encouragement during some personally and professionally challenging time while I worked on this book.

Finally, I thank the members of dm_cram (http://dmcram.org) who confirmed the need for this book.

About the Reviewers

Gaurav Kathuria completed his B. Tech. (Hons.) in Chemical Engineering from I.I.T. Kharagpur in the year 2000 and has since been a prominent performer in diverse software fields, from IT services through product development to software consultancy.

He has a rich experience of designing, developing, and managing software systems using object-oriented languages and technologies like Java/J2EE and Documentum. He started working with Documentum 4i in the year 2001 and has ever since had an extensive experience architecting/designing complex Documentum 4i and 5x projects.

He has also given in-house training on Documentum system architecture, fundamentals, and Web Publisher in many of the organizations he has worked in.

Brian Williamson is a Senior Consultant with Crown Partners. He has extensive experience in both software development and document management. He has worked with Documentum software for a number of years with specialization in both WDK and Web Content Management with Web Publisher. Brian lives in Atlanta with his wife and dogs and in his spare time enjoys reading and baseball.

Preface

A few years ago (feels like ages now) I dove head first into the EMC Documentum space and was overwhelmed in spite of the significant enterprise technology experience I had under my belt. A simple Documentum deployment involves about five components and there are over 50 products available today in the EMC Documentum suite, not counting the third-party products that have mushroomed around the platform.

I wondered if there was any documentation that would enable me to wrap my arms around this challenge. Indeed, there was documentation way more than what I was ready to handle as a beginner. I needed something, maybe a book, to get me started in one place and then help me navigate the documentation as a reference by ordering things in an effective fashion.

I am glad to finally see some books on Documentum making it to the market. Web Content Management with Documentum by Gaurav Kathuria guides readers in setting up and configuring Documentum for a Web Content Management solution. It also provides an overview of the platform essentials. A Beginner’s Guide to Developing Documentum Desktop Applications by M. Scott Roth guides readers in desktop application development for Documentum.

When EMC announced the addition of Documentum exams to their Proven Professional certification program, I was excited to see an opportunity to make a contribution. I value certification exams for one benefit above any other rapid learning. Preparation for these exams exposes the candidate to the breadth and depth of the subject in a short period. Test preparation, when done right, can stimulate rapid growth in knowledge. I consider practice questions and tests to be the best mechanism for identifying gaps in knowledge and, thus, guiding the study effort for maximum effect.

In this book, I share this approach and provide over 250 practice questions to nudge the reader in the directions that would help them the most. I also hope that this book will prove to be a gentle introduction to the breadth of the core Documentum platform and will facilitate entry of technology professionals into the Documentum community.

Pawan Kumar

Introduction

EMC Documentum is the leading enterprise content management (ECM) platform globally. EMC Proven Professional certification is an exam-based certification program, which introduced a new EMC Proven Content Management Application Developer (EMCAD) track in early 2007. The first exam in this track is Content Management Foundations Associate-level Exam, whose exam code is E20-120.

This book is a complete study guide and includes study material and practice questions to prepare for this exam. Even though this book focuses on certification preparation, it strives to serve Documentum beginners and practitioners irrespective of their interest in the certification exam. It can also serve as a handy guide and quick reference to the technical fundamentals that is fully up to date for Documentum 5.3. Beginners are introduced to concepts in a logical manner while practitioners can use it as a reference to jump to relevant concepts directly.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Content management is a rapidly growing discipline today as new technologies attempt to bring the same rigor to managing unstructured content (documents, for example) that databases brought to structured data decades ago. Content management includes various aspects of creating, manipulating, and accessing content including lifecycle and business process automation.

Content lifecycle helps move content through various states, often starting with creation and ending with expiration and archiving. Automating content-centric business processes can bring efficiency to operations and can create a searchable record of events, actions, and performers involved in these processes.

ECM takes these content management aspects to enterprise scales (large number of users, high availability, distributed deployments, high performance, etc.) and enables integration with other systems, which can act as sources or consumers of managed content.

While ECM refers to management of electronic documents in general, several specialized forms of content management have evolved to meet specific needs in more effective ways:

Web Content Management (WCM) is a popular form of content management. It provides rich features for managing web content. For example, web content authors can create content using simple user interfaces without knowing much about technology. The content can be routed to reviewers and approvers and, once approved, can be automatically published to the target website.

Record Management is another form of content management that creates and controls records in various forms that typically serve the legal needs of enterprises.

Compliance Management enables organizations to comply with legal requirements and to prove their compliance with law.

Each of these different forms of content management is implemented on the Documentum platform as a combination of applications and services.

EMC Documentum

Gartner research produces an annual report on the global ECM space. The 2006 report (http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/emc/vol2/article3/article3.html) forecasts a compound annual growth at 12.8% through 2010 and shows EMC Documentum as the clear leader in this space. EMC has been a well-known leader in enterprise storage hardware and technologies and it has enhanced that position with the acquisition of Documentum. The magic quadrant from the Gartner report is shown in the next figure.

EMC Certification

EMC Proven Professional certification is an exam-based certification program, which has introduced a new EMC Proven Content Management Application Developer (EMCAD) track. The first exam in this track is Content Management Foundations (CMF) Associate-level Exam (E20-120). This exam tests knowledge about technical fundamentals of Documentum and is sufficient for achieving the Associate-level certification.

Associate-level certification along with Content Management Server Programming Exam (E20-405) grants a Specialist-level certification. Currently only these two exams are available for Documentum. Another exam for Web Development Kit (WDK) programming is expected to become available soon. However, the CMF exam is likely to be a requirement for all Documentum-related certifications.

Why?

What is the value of possessing a certification? Should I take this certification exam? Such questions arise inevitably when one considers working towards any certification.

The answers to these questions are also inevitably specific to the individual asking the question. The answer depends on various factors including the industry, the supply and demand of skilled professionals in the space, the individual's demonstrable experience, and the employer's policies around certifications.

In a rapidly growing niche space like EMC Documentum, demand far outweighs the supply of skilled professionals and this is reflected in the (average) compensation for EMC Documentum services relative to other areas like enterprise Java. As a result, it is a burden on the entity paying for these services to ensure that the services are well worth the costs. A certification provides an assurance of a baseline skill level for the professional providing these services. Therefore, possession of a certification makes the professional's services more marketable.

Along the same lines, a professional seeking to enter the space may have little specific experience to show and may find it hard to compete with people already in this space. Possession of a certification may push the individual's credibility just high enough to provide an opening from where the professional can prove his or her worth.

Irrespective of your reason for taking a certification exam, it would take commitment (and money, currently US$200) to pass such an exam. Certification exams tend to be more academic than reflective of the real-life practice for the subject. Typically, these exams are based on a well-defined syllabus and tend to test the candidate's awareness or understanding of the concepts, though a smaller number of exams are oriented towards the application of the knowledge as well. Real-life practice typically utilizes a small section of the overall subject knowledge (the clichéd 80-20 term comes to mind) and additional knowledge of related areas to make effective use of the subject.

I recall crossing the fence over to the certified side with the Java Programmer certification exam about six years ago. The preparation experience was incredibly enriching as well as humbling as I systematically nailed my weak areas and worked on them to come out stronger each time. In the next section, I share this preparation approach that essentially ferrets out and eliminates one's weaknesses.

Why?

Now that we know why we should take the certification exam, let's see how to proceed for this exam. You should now be keen to know how to approach and where to register for this professional exam. The following sections will give you the required information.

Approach

Preparation for a professional certification typically competes with other individual responsibilities including work and family. As such, it often becomes an exercise in resource (time, effort, and money) allocation to maximize the results with minimal contention of conflicting demands. In order to make the most of the effort and resources being spent, one needs to prioritize the order in which the topics need attention and the amount of attention required by each topic.

There are probably several good approaches for preparing for exams and their effectiveness varies for individuals due to differences in learning styles. However, I believe that the following approach is a high-level guideline and can be used to tune specific styles of preparation.

If you are familiar with the concept of bottlenecks (as in performance tuning) you will easily identify with this preparation approach. Even if this is a new concept for you it is not very difficult to grasp. It is also similar to what is known as theory of constraints, where you systematically remove constraints to achieve higher performance relative to the goals. The key