Core Content Only

Archive for September, 2008

Some of you may have used or even still have an excel spreadsheet which can be used to update metadata. This spreadsheet was originally provided by the former content server creator, Stellent. I am actually unaware of the name or names of the original author or authors and as such have not credited them here. Leave your name to take credit!  Some people love it.  Some people hate it.  Either way, it has been useful to me.Â
The original style sheet allowed users to specify additional custom columns named after their custom metadata. It offered two buttons. The first was “submit query’ which invoked the user defined query string located to the left of the button. The second button “update’ would cycle through each of the result records from the query and update the metadata based on the values in the spreadsheet.Â
I have updated the spreadsheet in two ways. I have added a login button which simply causes a prompt for user credentials. The importance of this button is the reduction in steps needed to update secured content. With the original spreadsheet the user first had to search on public content only and invoke an update which then prompted for credentials after which the user could conduct another search which would then have the credentials to access secured content. With the login button we can now skip this cycle. The second change is a new worksheet which contains configuration variables for the searches. Currently there are three configuration variables including ResultCount, SortField and SortOrder. 

Additionally I often get asked how one can use this spreadsheet to update metadata only check-in’s. The trick is an additional column named createPrimaryMetaFile. This column should be set to TRUE if that record represents a metadata only check in.Â
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This file and all updates to it are presented here as-is with no support implied or otherwise. As always, use at your own risk.

References:Â
Download the Remote Metadata Updater

Brian "Bex" Huff and Andy MacMillan delivered a session called "A Pragmatic Strategy for Oracle ECM" which pushed some of the integration and cooperative concepts that have been pervasive among the keynotes and sessions today. They describe their approach to content management as more realistic than the message presented by many vendors as "Hey, we will do it all". Their approach is also more tolerant of your existing content repositories and your investment in those elements.

They describe a situation where a client has several existing content repositories. Some of these can be consolidated into your new strategic content management repository. Some of them cannot. This can be due to technical issues or the fact that you have spent a lot of money on those repositories and/or users are entrenched in using that repository already. These previously existing repositories that perhaps service tremendous load or importance but are not capable or selected as the strategic repository are termed tactical repositories.

The session then moved on to discuss federated software solutions to help control and integrate your existing, tactical repositories with the feature set of your new strategic enterprise wide solution. Examples of these federated software applications included Secure Enterprise Search and Information Rights Management.

Additionally, these two guys are writing a book together, potentially entitled "Transform Infoglut: A Pragmatic Strategy for Oracle Enterprise Content Management" and it will hopefully be delivered sometime around January 2009.

I attended Brian "Bex" Huff's session entitled "Enterprise 2.0: What it is and How You'll Fail". At first attendance was a little sparse, but by 20 minutes in we got more than 15 people in the room. One of the biggest themes of the message was about focus. Focus on Culture versus Technology. This is one of those points that is so foundational to the concept at hand that once you hear you say to yourself, "Well sure, that's obvious", but you would not normally come up with it on your own.

We also heard an echo from the old Stellent days when he reminded us of the importance of "Getting the right information at the right time to the right people in the right format and context". This reminded me of the big launch of Profiles with 7.5.x Stellent Content Server. It was true/relevant/important then and it still is today.

There were a lot of concepts presented in the presentation and of them all the concept of Social Capital was my favorite. This was somewhat new to me. The concept was not new, but being able to linguistically wrap a name around the subject was a neat discovery. The concept of Social Capital is described on Wikipedia. Basically it can be thought of as referring to the value of the connection between employees and potentially even vendors. People like to work with their friends and so projects get done quicker or more thoroughly.

In the end, I wonder how much push back corporate America will engage in when liability of all this Enterprise 2.0 culture and technology come to bear. While companies may accept it at first, I am concerned about a backlash that comes from committing so much of what would have been hallway conversations, water cooler talk, quick phone calls, etc., into a written, searchable, liable format.

All in all, great talk. It is certainly though provoking.

As a result of one of the more recent core updates for oracle content server the actual update screen has several new pieces of data available to help you with the install.  I am not exactly sure when these pieces started showing up in the component update screen but they are very handy.

There is a marker for current status along with the bundled version marker and installed version marker which help you compare your installed version with the new version inside the core update.  This will help you make the decision as to whether or not you should place a checkmark in the checkbox thereby installing the component coming in from the core update.

My thanks to whomever got this in place.

There are several ways to execute iDocScript from Java, but in this quick example we will use a PageMerger object.  There are several ways to get ahold of a PageMerger object.  If you are executing in a context where a service object is readily available you may be able to get a PageMerger object reference with code like this:

PageMerger pm = m_service.m_pageMerger;

If that doesn't work for you I would try something like:

PageMerger pm = new PageMerger(databinder, executioncontext); 

Now that you have your merger object you can execute all kinds of iDocScript code, an example of which might be:

pm.evaluateScript("<$lc(\"wwMyString\")$>");