Archive for May 2011
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You’ve got to have a poker face, like me dude…
2 Comments · Posted by Lawrence Maynard in Enterprise Content Management
There’s a chocolate fish in it for anyone who can tell me where the above line comes from…
Anyway, as you’ll know from my previous posts, EMC and Documentum are ‘betting the farm’ on Content Enabled Applications (Case Management) as the next wave in Content Management – this is a smart bet and many in the industry are seeing the same trend, take a look at the following blog post http://www.aiim.org/community/Discussions/xCP-and-EMC60s-big-Case-Management-Gamble
You’ll also get to take a look (by following the link) at some of the entrants for the xCP challenge.
We at Documentum World will also be running our own xCP challenge soon – whereby my team will build an xCP Proof of Concept for the best customer suggested case management application…
I’m confident that EMC won’t be ‘betting the farm’ on a ‘high card’ and I’d expect we’d be nearer to a ‘straight flush’ or at least a ‘full house’
With a bit of luck, we won’t even need that poker face..
We were in a management meeting the other day and we were discussing the Documentum World blog. The Asia Pacific IIG Chief Architect, Chris Tolhurst, looked too relaxed for my liking so I decided that he needs a few more wrinkles…
As a result we’ll be getting regular contributions from Chris that are more technical in nature and I’m sure he’d be happy to post on any topic that you wish – just post a comment.
His first contribution follows…
Many of you will have read about the release of Documentum xPlore and the phasing out of FAST for full text indexing within the Documentum product suite. So, what exactly is xPlore, how is it different from FAST and how do I move between them?
Let’s start with a little history.
In the Beginning There Was Verity
For about as long as I can remember and up until Documentum 5.3, full text indexing and search was provided by the Verity FTE engine. It was tightly coupled to the product and was run on the content server.
This all changed, of course, with the introduction FAST as a replacement in Documentum 5.3. FAST InStream 4.3 was used for the integration and remains in current Documentum versions, albeit as 4.3.1. This change was additionally significant because it externalised the index server and also brought about the introduction of a pluggable architecture for index and search. Simplistically, this looks like the following:
The original intent was to have a framework where a variety if full text engines could be used but really only realised the addition of one in the form of Apache Lucene for the OEM edition of Content Server.
So now it is time for FAST to be replaced (the Microsoft buyout had nothing to do with it, really….). Actually, the main reasons are FAST being moved away from the OEM business and InStream 4.3.1 not being supported beyond 2011. Why not upgrade to a newer version of FAST you say? Well that’s another story but my speculation is on platforms being phased out for FAST and the odd commercial consideration.
Along Came xPlore
You may have heard of ESS or DSS which were internal names for what is officially known as xPlore. EMC Documentum xPlore represents the next generation of search from Documentum. It is based on the open source Apache Lucene project but underpinned with the power of EMC’s XML database, xDB. It leverages the query and index plug-ins in the same manner as FAST.
The Controlled Release began in July 2010 and included participation from over 32 qualified customers. This is the highest ever for a Documentum Controlled Release program. Version 1.0 of Documentum xPlore went Generally Available (GA) in November 2010.
EMC Documentum xPlore introduces a number of benefits over the previous FAST implementation:
- Virtualisation support
- Additional support for storage – NAS now supported
- Integrated Documentum security
- Enhanced administration
- Native facet computation
- Improved performance and scaling
- Query and ingestion analytics
- Improved HA /DR support
- Easier deployment (especially with multi-node)
Many of these are topics in themselves so I won’t go into them now.
The current version of xPlore is 1.0. This version supports English, German & Chinese languages. Version 1.1 will be bundles with Documentum 6.7 and will add language support for French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Korean.
So How Long Do I Have?
As mentioned earlier in this post, Microsoft will cease support for InStream 4.3.1 at the end of 2011 – effectively on 12/31/2011. This means that FAST for Documentum will not be available for download from that date and it also means that there are no new features being added in the integration. It is basically in a holding pattern or “sustaining mode” to use internal speak.
Both FAST and xPlore are supported on 6.5 SP2, 6.5 SP3 and 6.6 so you have a choice with these versions but Documentum 6.7 will only use xPlore as will versions beyond that.
The official line from Powerlink is:
“Because of this change in support from Microsoft, FAST InStream server now has a different end-of-support cycle than the rest of the Documentum Platform. Documentum 6.5 SP2, 6.5 SP3, and 6.6 will be the last releases that will support FAST (up until the end of 2011). EMC recommends that customers who want to ensure full support of search functionality should upgrade to xPlore before the end of 2011.”
Migrating
This is another of those topics in themselves which I will leave to the next post. Let me leave it by saying that you have several options available when migrating from FAST to xPlore. In order of decreasing downtime the main approaches are:
- A cold swap – replace FAST with xPlore and re-index
- Straight migration – build xPlore indexes while FAST is running and cut over
- Dual Mode Indexing – allows both FAST and xPlore to be available on the same repository
The next post will look at what is involved in these and the pros and cons of each.
Some follow up links
FAQs https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-10268
Support Statement https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-8933
