EMC Documentum Integration

We have recently been working with some of our partners to allow them to integrate their client's 'Documentum' environments using Data Sync Studio. Currently, this is still in development but early signs are that we will offer the integration as a product. We have developed the product to be purely api based and it needs no connections to the underlying Database or content servers. I am going to run through moving files between the desktop and a Documentum environment. We could just as easily move files from a Sharepoint Library to Documentum as well. As usual we use the following simple integration steps in DS3:

• Connect to a source which in this case is a folder on my desktop
• Connect to the destination which is a Documentum folder within a Repository
• Map any fields we require. This mapping is a feature built into DS3 and allows us to lookup information to update Documentum metadata about the document entity.
• Press the 'Synchronise' button and the documents are sent up to Documentum with the meta data correctly set.

For this demonstration we are going to use some simple text files as examples but we can target more complex types in Documentum.

Step 1: Connecting to the file system source:

Select the folder containing the files you would like in Documentum.

Step 2 : Connecting to a Documentum Repository and Selecting in Folder

We have several options:

Credentials:

Username, password and optionally Domain.

DocumentType:

The connector displays a dropdown listing all types within the repository.

DocumentumServerURL:

The http address of the Documentum DFC url.

Timeout:

A timeout in of any request.

ContentUpdateBehaviour:

Under some circumstances we are not interested in integrating the content of a document just the attributes (contentless documents). We can choose to synchronise the content or not.

Folder:

The connector allows you to browse the folders within the Repository to find a folder to sync.

RepositoryName:

The Repository Name.

Step 3: Map the columns between the 2 Data Sources

There are several things to note about the connector:

• It will automatically bring back the attributes for the selected 'type' In this case we are just using the vanilla 'dm_document' type in Documentum.
• It will use the 'dm_formats' table to map files to their correct 'Format' in Documentum.
• It supports repeating attributes with a string[], int[] attribute type.
• Dynamic Columns are fully supported if we need to lookup values to write to attributes in the target types.

I added a new Dynamic Field called 'Subject' to map to the dm_document attribute Subject:

Step 3: Run the Synchronisation:

Comparing A->B (File Systems -> Documentum) and then synchronising moves the documents and updates the metadata accordingly:

When I delete some files from the source file system and change the Subject in the Dynamic Column to be 'Food and Beverage' we can update the new files. Comparing Comparing A->B (File Systems -> Documentum) again DS3 shows us the updates it will make to Documentum:

You might notice the performance times, there is no caching and the Documentum Server (Data Source B) is 3000 miles away over the internet. We can then see the update to the Subject in the Document properties:

As we progress through the development of this connector I will post some more blogs. If you would like more information about this Documentum connector please just drop an email to sales@simego.com and we can organise a chat over tea.