Recently one of our large pharmaceutical clients replaced a Documentum interface in a .NET application with access to an HPI Portal cache. The HPI Portal cache utilizes Apache Solr to store and serve approved content outside of Documentum for scalability and business continuity. This change resolved a significant maintenance problem for the application team, removed a roadblock that had halted a server upgrade, and improved performance of the .NET application for document retrieval.
In less than a month, the code change was made removing the old Documentum PIA (Primary Interop Assembly) API and replacing it with OpenSearch calls into the client’s existing HPI portal cache. The use of the PIA not only prevented the upgrading of the DFC but also prevented the application from running on an upgraded Windows Server OS. The PIA has been unsupported by Documentum since the release of Documentum 6.0. While the PIA has continued to work since then, many clients are now realizing that the PIA does not work with a 64-bit Windows operating system, forcing them to come up with an alternative.
The result from this simple change was the ability to reuse the Solr portal cache created for an HPI instance, remove a direct interface into Documentum from the .NET application, avoiding the overhead of Documentum session creation, and removal of all application constraints preventing an upgrade to a new Windows OS and 64-bit server. This project was a win for multiple teams and the client was happy to get added value from the earlier HPI portal investment.
To learn more about this project and TSG’s portal solution, check out these blogs:
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