ECM SOA standards with CMIS

Selecting the 'content services' layer -

One of the chief complaints has been the lack (or multitude) of multi-vendor standards for ECM that can fit into a SOA architecture. Recently, EMC, IBM and Microsoft have announced a new standard: CMIS that intends to address this. This standard will be submitted to OASIS for further work. In the mean time, several vendors such as Alfresco Oracle and others are developing implementations of this standard.

In my previous post, I described the components I thought were needed to support a fully functional SOA approach to ECM. Included was an item 'content services'. I believe that this standard fits well into this category. Other 'standards' also exist that we have used:
* WebDAV offers simple access to content and metadata over http.
* JSR 170 offers more sophisticated content model access for Java based clients.

Typically writing content aware applications involves customizing a proprietary content manager application using proprietary APIs and possibly scripting languages. If one is brave enough to attempt to develop an independent application that needs to integrate to a content repository (as we have been), only proprietary API's exist that lock the application into that vendor's content manager. Alternatively, most vendors support some level of WebDAV. So it is possible to develop a content aware application leveraging WebDAV, but different vendors support WebDAV to different levels of compliance. Also since there is no typing model, enforcing a content model standard is difficult. To overcome this in the past, we have developed a WebDAV client that adds typing capability. This effort drove us to look seriously at using JCR (JSR 170). Using JSR 170 means implementing a session based approach and, of course, locks you into Java. But it does offer rich content model semantics. However, its session based, its Java centric nature and its lack of support RESTful or SOAP channels makes it a poor choice for a SOA.

Since CMIS offers a stronger type model and can be developed in SOA friendly SOAP or RESTful manner, it seems it has the right stuff for a standard 'content services' layer to access the Content Repository. However, we need to leverage what exists now in our approach. Since we are a Java shop and will be leveraging one content vendor, JSR 170 still seems the best approach. For RESTful access strongly suggested at our organization, WebDAV may provide a stop gap. We will likely follow CMIS closely and prototype with it.

Next post, a discussion of the Enterprise Content Bus...