SUMMARY: Content Management and Frame

["Rick Henkel" <frameuser@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

ORIGINAL QUESTION: What are the different content management systems that
Frame can interface with? I know there's Documentum, but what else is there?

Someone requested that I summarize the information I received about this
topic.

Following are snippets of the responses.

============

We are using the SIM system (http://www.simdb.com/), distributed in the US
by SAIC out of the Washington DC area (contact details are on the SIM Web
pages). Some of what we have done with this is described in my May 2001
Technical Communication article - http://www.tenix.com/PDFLibrary/91.pdf.

The other two are (or were) Xyenterprise's Content@XML
(http://www.xyenterprise.com), and what used to be Chrystal's Astoria. Xerox
recently sold Chrystal to LightSpeed - http://www.lspeed.com/home.html.
Astoria appears to have been incorporated in a new range of products. A very
quick inspection doesn't tell me whether the new products still offer
FM+SGML integration. My understanding is that Chrystal's Canterbury product
also worked with vanilla FM - although this was phased out a year or so ago.
Whether they included this interface in the Astoria range, I don't know
either. However, if you are after content management support for vanilla FM,
you should talk to the new owners.

On the other hand, if you are going to go the content management route, I
strongly recommend that you migrate to XML at the same time if you have not
already done so.

You should also check out SiberLogic's SiberSafe
(http://www.siberlogic.com). This apparently only requires a few tweaks to
turn SGML into XML.

============

Rational's ClearCase will but you need their FrameMaker Fundamentals plug-in
to get the most out of it and you need a sys admin with a brain:).

============

We're using Perforce at this (New England) "branch" location for no other
reason than (west coast) corporate already had it with the idea of using it
for source code files. My manuals are in Frame with (majority) Visio
illustrations and we haven't had any problems. I don't know that there are
any advantages either though. We had heard corporate had Documentum
available too and some factions were promoting its use, but no effort was
made to help us roll it out on our server. Perforce was pretty easy to set
up ourselves. It does allow two people to take out the same file if the
first person doesn't lock the file. Then the two files have to be
"resolved", which appears to be easier for code than text docs. We try to
remember to lock.

============

Any ODMA compliant system should be compatible. I am not sure you will get
too many responses to this question because I think that most FM users do
not use them.

A quick search on the web should yeild good results, but you need to be
aware of the scope of your needs. At the top of the enterprise wide arena
you have Lotus Domino.Doc (works even better when used with Lotus Domino
Workflow - but is very, very expensive), but there are many other products
designed for a range of implimentation sizes (with a diverse range of
prices). Some of these systems are ODMA comliant ensuring transparent
integration with FM, others are not. Some include workflow routing, others,
like MS Visual SourceSafe do not. You could also consider alternative
solutions such as Miramo (a database publishing system that could help you).


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