P8FileNet

IBM P8 FileNet

Introduction :

About ECM:

                Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is set of technologies used to capture, store, preserver and deliver content and documents and content related to organizational Processes.

Features:

                ECM tools and strategies allows the management of an organization’s unstructured information, whenever that information exists.

About BPM:
               Business process management (BPM) is a discipline that leverages software and services to provide total visibility into your organization.
Focused:

• BPM is focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients.
• Discover, document, automate, and continuously improve business processes to increase efficiency and reduce costs. 

Leading ECM Products and their Vendors:

• EMC's Documentum
• IBM's FileNet
• Opentext's Hummingbird
• Interwoven
• Vignette

What is FileNet?

               FileNet is an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution product suite from IBM.Enterprises uses FileNet to manage their content and business processes.

               FileNet P8 platform, the latest version of FileNet system, provides a framework for developing custom enterprise systems, offering much functionality out of the box and capable of being customized to manage a specific business process.

History Of P8 FileNet:

• FileNet acquired Saros Corporation  in 1995 for its Electronic Document Management.
• FileNet also acquired Watermark Software, a document imaging solution, Watermark Enterprise and Ensemble, and a Windows-based COLD product called GreenBar. This would help FileNet be the first document management company to have a complete "Integration Document Management" suite with document imaging, electronic document management, COLD and workflow offerings. Watermark products were retired by 1999
• As the result of their Integration Document Management strategy, FileNet rebranded the entire product line - the original IMS products, the Saros products, and the newly developed client IDM products - as the Panagon Software suite in 1998.
• On Augest 10,2006, IBM agreed to acquire FileNet for US$1.6 Billion dollars in cash.

Architecture Of P8 FileNet:

Clients: The user interfaces. Clients include FileNet P8 Workplace, custom web applications.These applications are provided by the web server and typically run through an internet browser.

Presentation: The gateway between the clients and the business logic. This layer formats the data to present to a client in order to minimize the client footprint. It also provides the servlets, or client applications to be downloaded into the client browser application.

Business Logic: The layer that maintains business logic. This layer governs processes and content. You might think of this layer as where most of the work gets done.

Data: This layer is furthest removed from the user. This is where the content is stored, including workflows.

The Three Main Engines:

An engine is a collection of services and components that perform a set of related functions. In general, although the engine is comprised of many different parts, it is regarded as a single unit, which takes some kind of input and produces some kind of output. Understanding how it works is not necessary for this course, but it is important to know what it does.

Content Engine: The FileNet P8 Content Engine provides software services for managing different types of business-related content, collectively referred to as objects, in a FileNet P8 object store.

Process Engine: The FileNet P8 Process Engine is a collection of services and components that enable defining and managing workflows that automate business processes.

Application Engine: The FileNet P8 Application Engine is a platform independent web application development environment that provides J2EE Application Components and System Components that operate in J2EE Platform Products (application servers) such as BEA WebLogic and IBM WebSphere.

Connectivity:

Distributed Component Object Model:

DCOM is a set of technologies based on COM, but with extended functionality that allows an application on one computer to interact with objects on another. In FileNet P8, DCOM is used by the FileNet Enterprise Manager to communicate with Object Stores over a corporate network. FileNet Enterprise Manager is discussed in subsequent lessons. COM stands for Component Object Model and is Microsoft’s framework for developing and supporting component objects.

Simple Object Access Protocol:

This protocol is used for requests from the Application Engine to the Content Engine. It then transforms the SOAP (in XML) into COM requests 

RMI Remote Method Invocation:

Several FileNet processes require RMI, which is built into the Java environment. The client and server components communicate via RMI, which is an RPC mechanism designed for and built into the Java language.

LDAP:

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. LDAP is a client-server protocol used to connect to a repository of

information. FileNet P8 requires an LDAP-compliant directory server to authenticate users. 

ADSI:

Active Directory Service Interfaces. ADSI is a set of COM interfaces used to access the Active Directory, or the DAPI, for accessing the Exchange Server directory. Active Directory is the directory service in a Windows 2000 network. A directory service is a network service that stores information about network resources and makes it accessible to users and applications.

OLE DB:

OLE DB is Microsoft's strategic low-level application program interface (API) for access to different data sources. OLE DB includes not only the Structured Query Language (SQL) capabilities of the Microsoft-sponsored standard data interface Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) but also includes access to data other than SQL data. OLE once stood for "Object Link Embedding" and "DB" for database. However, Microsoft no longer ascribes these meanings to the letters "OLE" and "DB."

WebDAV:

Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning. WebDAV is not a language or a program, but a convention used by several software companies to standardize collaborative web authoring by using a set of extensions to HTTP. These companies create WebDAV clients and allow them to interface with a WebDAV provider, enabling them to have access to this functionality. FileNet P8 supports several WebDAV clients, including Microsoft Office tools (Word, Excel, etc.) and Macromedia Dreamweaver.