The most popular and comprehensive Open Source ECM platform
Let us know more
ECM and Standards
AIIM did a recent survey to try to determine end-user opinions about standards and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems. Their survey was sent to 1200 end-users of content and document management systems in nine different countries. The top three benefits of standards and ECM cited by users include:
- Unifies Business Practices (42%)
- Leverages our IT skill set (38%)
- Decreases total cost of ownership (37%)
Some standards that AIIM mentions in the survey that they feel are relevant to ECM include XML, .NET, SOAP, UDDI, ebXML, and CORBA.
While standards like SOAP are important to any IT initiative today, two initiatives that are very important to ECM and interoperability of ECM systems are AIIM’s iECM (Interoperable Enterprise Content Management) and JCR (Java Content Repository). The JCR has been specified within the JSR-170 and on-going JSR-283 initiatives. AIIM provides a very good blog that discusses some of the differences between the two iECM and JCR.
One major difference between iECM and JCR is that iECM is language agnostic while the JCR is language-specific for Java. The first planned protocol binding for iECM is Web Services based. iECM is designed to work well in Services Oriented Architecture, while JCR is not. This deficiency is one reason that JCR is being addressed and reworked as part of JSR-283.
The services approach of layering a Web Services interface on top of an content management system that can be implemented using any language or architecture style is an approach that is much friendlier to existing content systems than that of JCR.
iECM is a developing ECM standard that deserves more detailed consideration as an approach for providing ECM interoperability via a common interface. It has yet to develop much momentum, but it appears to be in good position to gain popularity.
