Update 10/28/2010: Adobe successfully completes its acquisition of Day Software. Day will operate as a new product line within Adobe’s Digital Enterprise Solutions Business Unit, joining Acrobat, Connect and LiveCycle. Welcome to all my new teammates!

Adobe has just announced a definitive agreement stipulating its intent to acquire Day Software. This acquisition will bolster Adobe’s leadership in Customer Experience Management, bringing Day’s industry-leading Web Content Management, Digital Asset Management and Social Collaboration applications, better known collectively as CQ, and Web scale content application infrastructure (CRX) together with Adobe’s LiveCycle, Connect and other enterprise software offerings–not to mention Adobe’s Flash Platform and industry-leading tools for creative professionals.

There is plenty to talk about in terms of how deeply aligned this acquisition is architecturally, technically and in terms of shared vision, and I plan to use this space to go into more of these details over time (e.g. synergies between Day’s targeting and optimization and Adobe Omniture‘s capabilities). However, I’m equally excited by the people involved here.

I’m looking forward to shortly being able to call folks like David Nuescheler, Kevin Cochrane and Roy T. Fielding not just industry colleagues but fellow Adobe employees. Welcome to Adobe, Day Software!

For more on Adobe’s approach to superior customer experience, I encourage you to subscribe to experiencedelivers.com and/or follow @AdobeCEM.

Update 7/28/2010: The Web is all a-buzz about this acquisition, and I would say it’s with good reason. Simply put: customer experience wins and therefore customers win, which means that businesses embracing Adobe CEM increase their own profitability.

Since my brief post above, Adobe has posted a press release and FAQ about the acquisition. Rob Tarkoff, SVP and GM of Adobe’s Digital Enterprise Solutions Business Unit (or DESBU) has also posted his thoughts, offering some key takeaways to consider from this acquisition.

Laurence Hart was kind enough to pick-up my previous post on content-enabled applications and add his thoughts to the subject, especially concerning the role CMIS can play.

From my first post: Content-enabled applications should facilitate the convergence of content, collaboration, interaction, and process.

I agree with Laurence (aka JaneDoePie) that content is an enabler, not the center. All content-enabled applications “should be shaped to work with and enhance the process the users use to perform their work.”

Laurence offers case management as his favorite, generic content-enabled application in order to further ground the point that success is determined by the combination of content, user experience (interaction, more than just UI, IMHO) and process (e.g. collaborative workflow).

I’m in the middle of reading Subject To Change, and already I’ve found its message highly relevant to the subject of content-enabled applications. For example, the book focuses on experience strategy and how to develop organizational empathy where the target users of your products or services are concerned. Specifically, in the case of case management, the book would argue that you, as case management application architect/designer, need to actually observe case workers in their native setting to appreciate how case management really works (or doesn’t). Go beyond theory and someone else’s analysis. Experience business activity firsthand in order to model reality into your solution.

Recently as part of the Case Management Solution Framework xCelerated Composition Platform (xCP) released for D6.5 SP1, a sample application for grants management was shipped that illustrates how Process Suite components can be used to build case-based, content-enabled applications. You can download this package from Powerlink (authentication required). The easiest way to run this sample application is to install it using the express installer, which will install all the right components (with their compatible versions) and the DAR file. You can also download the express installer from Powerlink (authentication required).Please see the update below for the correct link.

A goal of a solution framework is to make it easier to build content-enabled applications such as those for case management. A solution framework should allow you to invest more time in becoming empathic in order to ship solutions that resonate well with your users and drive more efficient business as a result.

In this response, I wanted to focus on empathy’s role. Separately, I plan to pick up the CMIS angle raised by Laurence. Thanks in advance for joining our discussion online…

Update 5/1/2009: A PM colleague pointed out to me that the link to the “one click” installer that takes one from state “zero” (i.e. Windows but not database) to state “ready for proof of concept” is as follows: https://emc.subscribenet.com/control/dctm/download?element=2193203 (authentication required). Cheers!

Both Pie and Marko have blogged about content-enabled applications, or what Gartner calls CEVAs (content-enabled vertical applications).

As it so happens, I’ll be presenting there will be a session on this subject next month at EMC World 2009.

Based on my research of what folks label a content-enabled application, two things rise to the top: process (surrounding content) and subject matter expertise (individual or group surrounding process), and context. OK, three things.

For example, Forrester defines content-centric applications as “solutions that put the business’ content to use, and add context along the way–to support line-of-business needs.” Example solutions include customer self-service, claims processing, proposal management, contract management, and case management.

Other CEVA vendors argue that content-enabled applications are process-oriented, not content-centric. I tend to prefer this viewpoint. A claim is valueless in itself. Only once is claim is processed is value realized, including taking a future liability off the books.

Content-enabled applications should facilitate the convergence of content, collaboration, interaction, and process.

Before you leverage your content in an application to generate value, ask yourself few questions:

• Who uses the content? Why? How?
• What processes does the content support?
• If I’m not a subject matter expert for this type of content, who can I involve to design a better application experience?
• What processes does it support?
• What context is involved, either centrally or peripherally?

Start with something familiar to just about anyone these days: email (or IM, micro-blogging, etc.). Answer the questions. See how applications, for example, around email have evolved. Think about where current email applications may have untapped potential. Etc.

So, where have all the CEVAs gone (as Marko asks)?

• I think that we in the content management business do ourselves a disservice by overly complicating concepts (e.g. behind TLAs or FLAs). Although fine as a conceptual catalyst, CEVA is self-defeating, IMHO, as a rallying label.
• I agree that CMIS has great potential to increase the availability of content-enabled applications, if for no other reason, because application development that consumes the proposed standard should have a greater return on investment by being applicable to multiple content repositories. (ECM vendor partners are you listening?)
• In the end, it’s the application, not the content or the process or the people. That is, if you’re just adding a document and perhaps a workflow to some code, you may have an app…but it won’t be used. Focus on user experience (i.e. the meaningful, intuitive presentation of content, context and process together).

Back to EMC World…          

I’ll miss interacting with ‘Zilla at the conference. It was at EMC World in 2007 (also held in Orlando, FL) that I first met Mark in person.

If you are able to make the conference and consider yourself to be a “2.0 type,” you may be interested in Len’s advert. Looks like there is even a LinkedIn event established for the conference.

I plan to tweet the conference and otherwise engage with the community. In the meantime, if you plan to attend my session (as presented by others), please feel free to comment (here or ECN) on your thoughts about content-enabled applications and what you’d like discussed or demoed. Thanks in advance.

Tomorrow at 11:30am local time there will be an informal CMIS panel at the AIIM info360 conference in Philadelphia (i.e. Doculabs expo booth 434). This panel is organized by AIIM (Betsy Fanning). Thomas Pole, iECM co-chair and organizer of the CMIS demo, will be the moderator.

My EMC colleague and OASIS CMIS TC chair, Dr. David Choy, will provide an overview of CMIS at 11:30am leading into the panel discussion. As a reminder to my fellow TC’ers, the panel is open to any TC member.

So, if you’re at AIIM info360 and want to learn more about CMIS, please join the discussion. You can also stop by the EMC booth (#825) for the duration of the expo. Cheers!

Yesterday at the AIIM info360 conference in Philadelphia, the iECM committee announced its sponsored demonstration of CMIS. The AIIM press release has more details here.

Today that demo is live: http://aiim-iecm.org/cmisdemoc/. If you’re at AIIM info360, please stop by the EMC booth (#825) for a personal tour of the demo application.

If you want to understand how the demo was made, I encourage you to read Pie’s account, especially since he was a central figure in producing the application above compliant repositories, including EMC.

CMS Wire recently picked up the development of CMIS Explorer by Shane Johnson (@shane_dev) at CityTech. CMIS Explorer (download) is a browser application written in Adobe AIR and Flex that uses the RESTful AtomPub binding of the proposed CMIS standard to interact with CMIS-compliant repositories.

Already early access support for CMIS is available from EMC, IBM and Alfresco. Such support makes it possible for applications like CMIS Explorer to be applied to a variety of content repositories in ways not possible before CMIS.

As fellow OASIS CMIS TC member Florent Guillaume from Nuxeo comments, though, CMIS is not yet a formal (fixed) standard. It is under development and somewhat fluid.

When a content repository vendor provides draft support, don’t assume that such support fully conforms to the current draft specification (e.g. v0.5). If you’re an application developer like Shane, you can know conformance exists by first building against what is specified on the OASIS site for CMIS and then pointing your application at desired content repository or repositories.

For example, you can point CMIS Explorer at a Documentum content repository via EMC CMIS support EA2 to search and to see types.

However, while basic interoperability seems OK, something prevents actual browsing functionality in CMIS Explorer from working with Documentum. In its com.citytechinc.cmis.Repository.setFolder() method, CMIS Explorer tries to get folder objects from root children via the following condition:
f.object.properties.propertyString.(@name=='BaseType').value == "folder"
However, draft CMIS specification v0.5 does not define a BaseType property, not does the EMC CMIS support EA2 contain this property. As a result, CMIS Explorer cannot find any folder object in root children, which prevents it from being able to browse a Docbase.

To be fair, my colleague, Norrie Quinn, has already pointed out this matter on Shane’s post, and Shane has replied.

My focus here is simply as follows: It’s important for applications to leverage the currently proposed CMIS bindings from OASIS rather than a particular vendor’s implementation of these bindings in order to promote interoperability.

It will be good to see the emergence of CMIS-based applications that go beyond exploration, navigation and portal-style user experiences. Such applications will help to influence the CMIS roadmap beyond version 1.0.

In the meantime, it’s great to see open source efforts like CMIS Explorer take root today. Thanks, Shane.

P.S. It would be good to see a community form around CMIS-based application development (e.g. shine a light on individual efforts, potentially pool interest and resources, solicit ideas and challenges, etc.). If you’re interested in something like, please leave me a comment. In the meantime, I plan to promote community efforts here as best I can. Thanks.

Thanks to a recent IT change concerning the OASIS JIRA server, I can now leverage ALM Works JIRA Client to work OASIS CMIS TC issues.

Furthermore, all OASIS Issue Trackers in the single OASIS JIRA server are available to me–or any other OASIS member!

Here is how…

1. Visit ALM Works and download JIRA Client.
2. Install JIRA Client and choose “Run JIRA Client” before exiting the installer.
3. Enter your license key. That is, download deskzilla_oasis.license to your local %USERPROFILE%\.JIRAClient directory (e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\.JIRAClient, on a Windows XP machine), and point your JIRA Client instance to your local license file (i.e. select it).
4. Verify the following license data is presented upon selection:
         Site license
      Licensed to: open-source community
      Support ID: 4000383
      Supported servers:
        JIRA [http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues]
5. Restart JIRA Client in order for this license to take effect (i.e. Start | Programs | JIRA Client | JIRA Client).
6. Configure connection (i.e. enter your OASIS member login credentials).
7. Connect and select the OASIS issue trackers of interest.
8. Initialize connection, which may take a short amount of time during first-time initialization.

At this point you should be able to leverage JIRA Client against OASIS issue trackers (e.g. CMIS).

Credits…

• A big thank you to ALM Works founder, Igor Sereda, for his support of open source projects and organizations like OASIS.
• Thanks also go to Mary McRae of OASIS for gently vetting JIRA Client licensing details, since I’m not an OASIS employee.

Just to be clear, this ALM Works software is not being provided by, nor licensed to OASIS as an organization. The JIRA Client license from ALM Works isn’t granted to OASIS, but it’s restricted to access the OASIS JIRA repository. Each person who installs will need to determine whether or not they are able to accept the licensing agreements for their organization.

Enjoy!

As indicated previously, I’ve uploaded a CMIS v0.5 sample to EDN. This sample works with EMC Documentum CMIS EA2.

This CMIS sample is intentionally similar to a sample produced previously for DFS 6.5 SP1. The intent is to help you compare and contrast one set of service contracts from the other. In doing so, please keep in mind that CMIS is focused on basic library services for content management—common features across supporting repositories—while DFS is focused on the broader richness of the EMC Documentum ECM Platform.

It’s worth noting that in the case of its CMIS Repository service interaction, this sample EXE was also used by IBM during this week’s TC meeting against their P8-based WSDL endpoint—requiring only a binding configuration change (i.e. zero code changes).

I mentioned that the CMIS AtomPub service (introspection) document for EA2 is accessible as follows: <code>http://host:port/resources/cmis</code>. Let’s say your EA2 installation is running at localhost on 8080, then a request for this document will return the following type of response:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<ns3:service xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:ns2="http://www.cmis.org/2008/05" xmlns:ns3="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">
  <ns3:workspace ns2:id="dfs">
    <title type="text">dfs</title>
    <ns2:repositoryInfo>
      <ns2:repositoryId>dfs</ns2:repositoryId>
      <ns2:repositoryName>dfs</ns2:repositoryName>
      <ns2:repositoryDescription>dfs</ns2:repositoryDescription>
      <ns2:vendorName>EMC</ns2:vendorName>
      <ns2:productName>Documentum</ns2:productName>
      <ns2:productVersion>6.5.0.033</ns2:productVersion>
      <ns2:rootFolderId>0c00302180000105</ns2:rootFolderId>
      <ns2:capabilities>
        <ns2:capabilityMultifiling>true</ns2:capabilityMultifiling>
        <ns2:capabilityUnfiling>false</ns2:capabilityUnfiling>
        <ns2:capabilityVersionSpecificFiling>true</ns2:capabilityVersionSpecificFiling>
        <ns2:capabilityPWCUpdateable>false</ns2:capabilityPWCUpdateable>
        <ns2:capabilityPWCSearchable>false</ns2:capabilityPWCSearchable>
        <ns2:capabilityAllVersionsSearchable>true</ns2:capabilityAllVersionsSearchable>
        <ns2:capabilityQuery>both</ns2:capabilityQuery>
        <ns2:capabilityJoin>inneronly</ns2:capabilityJoin>
        <ns2:capabilityFullText>fulltextandstructured</ns2:capabilityFullText>
      </ns2:capabilities>
      <ns2:cmisVersionsSupported>0.5</ns2:cmisVersionsSupported>
    </ns2:repositoryInfo>
    <ns3:collection href="http://localhost:8080/resources/cmis/repositories/dfs/objects/0c00302180000105/children" ns2:collectionType="root-children">
      <title type="text">root-children</title>
    </ns3:collection>
    <ns3:collection href="http://localhost:8080/resources/cmis/repositories/dfs/objects/0c00302180000105/descendants" ns2:collectionType="root-descendants">
      <title type="text">root-descendants</title>
    </ns3:collection>
    <ns3:collection href="http://localhost:8080/resources/cmis/repositories/dfs/types" ns2:collectionType="types-children">
      <title type="text">types-children</title>
    </ns3:collection>
    <ns3:collection href="http://localhost:8080/resources/cmis/repositories/dfs/types" ns2:collectionType="types-descendants">
      <title type="text">types-descendants</title>
    </ns3:collection>
    <ns3:collection href="http://localhost:8080/resources/cmis/repositories/dfs/checkedout" ns2:collectionType="checkedout">
      <title type="text">checkedout</title>
    </ns3:collection>
    <ns3:collection href="http://localhost:8080/resources/cmis/repositories/dfs/queries" ns2:collectionType="query">
      <title type="text">query</title>
    </ns3:collection>
  </ns3:workspace>
</ns3:service>

Your repository name and object identifiers will likely differ from the example references above, but hopefully you get the gist of the response payload.

Comparing the RESTful AtomPub binding to the SOAP binding in CMIS, one has to make two service requests to yield the same repository information (i.e. the block of data represented by <code>repositoryInfo</code> above) as follows:

repositories = repositoryService.getRepositories();
foreach (cmisRepositoryEntryType repository in repositories)
{
  cmisAnyXml repositorySpecificInformation;
  string repositoryId = repository.repositoryID,
         repositoryRelationship,
         repositoryDescription,
         vendorName,
         productName,
         productVersion,
         rootFolderId,
         cmisVersionsSupported;
  cmisRepositoryCapabilitiesType capabilities;
  XmlAttribute[] AnyAttr;
  XmlElement[] Any;
  repositoryService.getRepositoryInfo(ref repositoryId, out repositoryRelationship,
         out repositoryDescription, out vendorName, out productName,
         out productVersion, out rootFolderId, out capabilities,
         out cmisVersionsSupported, out repositorySpecificInformation,
         out Any, out AnyAttr);
  . . .
}

Comparing CMIS Repository service WSDL consumption with DFS Search service WSDL consumption, the same DFS-based consumer code is as follows:

Repository[] repositories = searchService.getRepositoryList(null);
foreach (Repository repository in repositories)
{
  . . .
}

To be clear, these examples are not provided for me to argue that one approach is better than another but rather to show how approaches differ based on domain model, use cases, etc.

I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to perform similar comparisons where query support and object support is concerned between DFS and CMIS.

Perhaps it’s also useful to comment on how WS-Security header information is passed to CMIS WSDL endpoints, since CMIS WSDL doesn’t currently declare headers explicitly in the service contract.

This sample injects WS-Security headers via app.config-based declaration (versus programmatically):

<extensions>
  <behaviorExtensions>
    <add name="usernameToken" type="SecurityMessageInspector.UsernameTokenBehaviorExtensionElement, SecurityMessageInspector, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null"/>
  </behaviorExtensions>
</extensions>
<behaviors>
  <endpointBehaviors>
    <behavior name="UsernameTokenBehavior">
      <usernameToken username="Administrator" password="emc" passwordType="PasswordText"/>
    </behavior>
  </endpointBehaviors>
</behaviors>

Right away, understand that this is a sample—you will likely want to take a more secure approach to managing user credentials. Certainly, if you employed this approach, you should employ a secure transport (i.e. SSL). Please see the sample solution’s README file for more details if a more programmatic approach is desired (with or without SSL).

There are other ways to "wire" WS-Security header creation and passing into applications. This particular sample takes a more subtle (less in-your-face) approach to accomplish this concern. Regardless, implicit SOAP headers in a contract require extra coding on the part of a consumer.

Earlier today, John Newton posted a nice summary of what the OASIS CMIS Technical Committee (TC) accomplished this Monday through Wednesday. Anyone interested in the CMIS progress will want to read John’s post.

Earlier this week, EMC released its second Early Access bits that support both bindings in the current draft specification.

It was great to spend time focusing on technical issues and discussing proposals to resolve them. Sometimes there simply isn’t a substitute for working with others in the same room! It was also nice to catch up with prior colleagues–John and Dave Caruana–and establish new report with others in the Enterprise Content Management industry.

In particular, I appreciate the effort made by TC’ers from EMC and IBM to get our bits–both REST and SOAP–interoperating together. We did make demonstrable progress–however difficult the technical environment (i.e. lack of viable network onsite) proved to be. (I’ll post my WCF test client (CMIS WSDL endpoint consumer) separately.)

(By the way, if you ever test MTOM content transfer while outputting messages to a console window, think twice about logging all HTTP traffic. I think that folks in the lobby of building 40 thought my laptop was a bomb when I rushed to leave the TC meeting after I couldn’t get my computer alarm to silence or stop–until a hard power-down action was applied. )

Update 1/31/2009: Thanks to Dennis Hamilton, here is a group photo of those physically present at the TC meeting:

Earlier today, the second Early Access (EA2) release of EMC Documentum ECM Platform support for the proposed CMIS standard (i.e. current v0.5 draft) was made publicly available via EDN Labs.

EA2 features support for both bindings in the proposed draft standard: SOAP and AtomPub.

• CMIS EA2 WSDL endpoints are available as follows:
  http://host:port/services/cmis/service?wsdl
  (e.g. http://localhost:8080/services/cmis/RepositoryService?wsdl)
• CMIS EA2 AtomPub service document is available as follows:
  http://host:port/resources/cmis
• CMIS EA2 WADL for the AtomPub resources (not covered by the CMIS specification):
  http://host:port/resources/application.wadl

You’ll find more deployment details in the associated guide.

EMC is committed to CMIS and the standards process. Just as there was an EA1 before this update, there will be subsequent EA releases in the future. Hopefully by making CMIS support available to you as the proposed standard develops and matures, you will consider exercising the draft bindings and submitting your feedback. Thanks in advance!

Update 1/27/2008: Pie (Laurence Hart) has posted about AIIM’s intention to demonstrate CMIS-based interoperability at its upcoming Expo via a prototype. EMC is looking forward to participating in this effort, which will provide a nice proof point for ECM customers, partners and vendors all.

…there’s a discussion over at Big Men on Content.

While I’ve been saying “see em eye ess” for CMIS up to this point, I’ve discovered that others are pronouncing CMIS “see miss” instead.

• One’s pronunciation of SQL has been offered in support of pronouncing CMIS (i.e. “see qul” versus “ess queue el”). (I say “see qul;” so perhaps I should be saying “see miss.”)
• Using the shortest pronunciation possible as measured by number of syllables has been offered in support of “see miss” (i.e. two versus four syllables).
• Conjunctives like CMIS-enabled, CMIS-ready, etc. has been offered in consideration of “see miss.” On other hand, “see em eye ess” may be better in conversation with someone not yet familiar with the standards effort.
• One’s locale and native language has also been offered in support of “see em eye ess” (e.g. easier to understand in conversation with non-native speakers by avoiding use of two common English words, which can be hard to parse in the middle of a sentence for someone not already used to the meaning).
• Pop culture features shows like CSI, SVU and NCIS. Initialism applies to these shows (e.g. you don’t hear “see sci” or “en sis”). Therefore, …

So, how do you say CMIS?

P.S. Yes, this is completely unimportant in every technical aspect where the standards effort around CMIS is concerned. Nevertheless, consistent identity, including pronunciation matters, and the standards effort is just getting started…

P.P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!

Today my EMC colleagues Dr. David Choy and Patricia Anderson presented CMIS to SOA World attendees, “An Industry Effort to Define a Service-Based Interoperability Standard for Content Management.” They were kind enough to let me post their work here.

Robin Cover just published a technology report for CMIS to support the activities of the OASIS CMIS TC and external commentary, and with the intent to update the document with relevant bibliographic references as the Technical Committee work progresses. Thanks, Robin.

This week has seen REST experts Roy Fielding and Sam Ruby comment on CMIS. As someone directly involved in CMIS, I wanted to acknowledge both Roy’s remarks and Sam’s remarks, which follow onto Roy’s.

The standards effort based in OASIS that is CMIS is indeed just getting started, as Sam notes. There is a lot of work to be done, and CMIS needs timely, constructive feedback from the wider community if it is to become widely adopted.

I apologize for the short notice, but I will be presenting a webinar on Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) this Thursday. Registration is still open: http://www.emc.com/events/2008/q3/09-18-08-cmis-launch.htm. I hope that you can not only listen to the presentation but also participate actively in the Q&A portion.

If you cannot participate but are still interested in CMIS, I will do my best to capture the Q&A in a follow-up post. Also, I believe that all those who register will receive an email with information on accessing a recording of the live event.

My colleague, Dave Choy, will be joining me to assist with Q&A; so, please come prepared with your questions. If the blogosphere since last Wednesday (i.e. CMIS launched on 9/10) is any indication, that shouldn’t be too much to ask. 

Update (9/18/2008): Thanks to those who attended this webinar and especially to those who asked questions. The audio recording of this event is already available here, and it does capture the Q&A toward the end.

Update (9/19/2008): You can also replay the webcast and download a PDF rendition of the slides here.

I am excited to (finally) say that EMC, IBM and Microsoft have announced the creation of a jointly developed interface specification called Content Management Interoperability Services, or CMIS. This is important news for the industry as CMIS uses web services to provide greater interoperability across multiple Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories.

The current draft specification will be submitted to OASIS and managed by technical committee to guide it toward finalization as a standard.

I said “finally” above because it’s been over two years since I first talked about ECM standards, admittedly (and out of legal obligation) at a high-level–followed up one year ago, here. So, finally, all can become clear…!

In preparation for today’s announcement, I had the opportunity to interview Kyle McNabb, Principal Analyst and Research Director at Forrester Research, to share his thoughts on the announcement. You can listen to Kyle’s perspectives as I ask him the following questions:

• Why is CMIS needed?
• Why does it matter who is involved in CMIS?
• Why is CMIS a step in the right direction?
• What will be the near-term impact of CMIS on the market?
• What will be the impact of CMIS to the industry as whole, including ISVs as well as organizations at the enterprise or department levels?
• What can enterprises expect in the future and how CMIS will help them over the long haul?

One of the impacts Kyle sees as a result of CMIS particularly resonates with me: separation of content repositories from content-centric applications in a manner similar to how SQL standardization enabled separation of the relational database from data-centric applications. Entirely new classes of applications (e.g. ERP) emerged with the arrival of SQL, and I’m optimistic about the same kind of potential emergence with the announcement of CMIS.

Frankly, I agree with Kyle’s pragmatic assessment of expectation and timeline. I also believe it will take time before we see new classes of content-centric applications emerge, but CMIS is, in my opinion, a step in the right direction.

As with any significant industry announcement, I expect to see plenty of press coverage by those companies involved, by analysts, etc. I’m also looking forward to what my EMC colleagues have to say about CMIS (e.g. Cornelia Davis, Andrew Chapman, Dave Graham, Len Devanna, Chuck Hollis, and Mark Lewis).

I encourage you to learn more about CMIS on the EMC Developer Network. For example, you can download the complete set of WSDL/XSD documents for the SOAP binding as well as schemas and example XML documents for the REST binding. You can also download a whitepaper that details technology concepts and business considerations involved with CMIS.

This first post on CMIS is intended to set the stage for deeper conversations about the specification, its domain model, its service model, and what its impact can become. So, if you have questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment here or otherwise join the conversation.

Update (today):
(1) Chuck Hollis has posted his thoughts on why CMIS is not JAS (just another standard). Good reading.
(2) Andrew Chapman has posted his thoughts (er, introduced a new word) on potential SharePoint de-silofication driven by CMIS. Another good read.

Update (9/12/2008):
(1) OASIS Proposed Charter for CMIS TC
(2) Mark Lewis addresses commoditization questions raised by CMIS.

Update (9/14/2008): OASIS coverage of CMIS news

Update (5/4/2010):
(1) OASIS CMIS 1.0 is approved as a standard.
(2) Approved errata has been incorporated on 11/4/2011.