Oracle UCM

11g upgrade white paper

Author: Deovrat Singh (deovrat.singh2@colt.net)

Introduction: Oracle universal content management is today being used as Colts key document
management system. There are several applications in Colt which is using oracleUCM as enterprise repository for storing and retrieving content. From Colts public website to financial document processing oracleUCM is the preferred content management solution. With increasing growth and rapid change in technology standards there are strong business need to upgrade the current oracleUCM version to the latest upgrade from Oracle i.e. 11g. Right now Colt is have enterprise licenses for oracleUCM 10gR4 version specifically. And the same version tends to support all the applications within Colt with document/content management needs.

Purpose: The purpose of this document is to detail the information about

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. How oracle UCM 11g is different? Current architecture of oracle UCM at Colt Factors supporting UCM upgrade Factors against UCM upgrade Proposed architectures

How oracle UCM 11g is different?

New oracle UCM release has undergone many significant changes as compared to the previous release. On high level all these changes can be grouped into 3 major sections:

1. Installation changes 2. Administrative changes 3. Miscellaneous changes

Installation changes: Oracle UCM is now deployed in weblogic server (WLS) instead of standalone executable process.

Administrative changes: Oracle UCM uses a WLS data source to communicate with the database where metadata and other information is stored. This database connectivity and the communication parameters are managed using the weblogic management console, not Content Server's System Properties utility as was done with previous version. Other administrative changes are: Running in standalone mode: To run applications or utilities in a standalone mode the database connection information must be entered into the config.cfg file using the System Properties utility. Connection pooling and management: The WLS data source connection pooling mechanism handles database connections. User administration: Oracle UCM uses the WLS user store to manage user names and passwords. Therefore user management must be performed using the WLS user management tools rather than the User Admin applet in Content Server. All user authentications are done against the WLS user store. You can use the Admin applet to create users and assign passwords, but the user must also be created and assigned a password in the WLS user store.

Miscellaneous changes: All other changes which are not grouped under above mentioned 2 categories are listed as miscellaneous changes. List is as below:

1. Change in content server basic mechanism as now it uses the shared infrastructure of weblogic server for clustering, data source and security realms. 2. Improved Content Integration Suite 3. New Content Portlet Suite 4. Folios and Folders support 5. Improved Desktop Integration Suite 6. Improved and enhanced features of dynamic converter 7. Content Organizer out of the box 8. Content Tracker out of the box 9. Content Basket out of the box 10. Improved application adapters for easy connectivity with external applications 11. Improved Digital asset management (PDF/TIFF/XML converter) 12. Video manager out of the box 13. Site Studio for external applications 14. New retention management

Current architecture of oracleUCM at Colt

# 1

Instance # Old Colt .Net Instance

1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 2. 3. 4.

New Colt .Net Instance

Intranet Instance

IPM/UCM Instance

Configuration 4 node cluster Oracle 10gR4 version Verity indexing Oracle 11g database with failover 5 node cluster 1 node for contribution 4 node for consumption Oracle 10gR4 version Database indexing Oracle 11g database with failover 2 node cluster Oracle 10gR4 version Verity indexing Oracle 11g database with failover 2 node cluster Oracle 10gR4 version Database indexing Oracle 11g database with failover

Applications 1. Colt Online 2. CRC 3. VTR Report Upload

1. Colt .Net

1. Intranet

1. Financial Document Management 2. Contract Management 3. XTRAC 4. E-Order

Factors Supporting UCM Upgrade

# 1 2 3 4 5 6 Description Current version of oracle UCM is outdated with respect to the most industry standards operating today. Oracle UCM 10gR4 is not CMIS complaint. Oracle UCM 10gR4 is missing stable version of new enterprise 2.0 capabilities out of the box implementation like tagging/blogs/wikis/micro-blogging/social features etc. Outdated user experience Oracle UCM 10gR4 is lacking consolidation of underlying services to enhance the configuration, management and scalability. IPM/UCM oracle UCM instance in Colt is right now supporting 4 different applications: 1. Financial Document Management (IPM-ERP) 2. XTRAC 3. E-Order 4. Contract Management This instance repository is designed to handle max 1TB data with agreed SLA in place. 80% of this 1TB space today is filled with Finance documents which are very less likely to be shared with any other application in Colt. Applications like XTRAC, E-Order and Contract Management only contribute to 20% of space being utilized on this instance and the nature of documents checked in by these applications are more likely to be shared with other application in Colt. Keeping all these applications on same instance is creating space issues for all of them. In future there are several other applications which intend to use the same IPM/UCM instance for storing and sharing documents like: 1. DCD 2. Siebel In terms of space requirement these application do not have much scope of being targeted on the same platform. These application will also need to share documents with other applications on the same instance like (XTRAC, E-Order, Contract Management) so they cannot be targeted to a different instance. Intranet UCM instance is not getting updated in terms of contribution strategies and methodologies. It is still using the same old web-form check in mechanism Features like content tagging, subscription, notifications and social features are missing from Intranet UCM as it is still operating on oracle UCM 10gR4 version Colt .Net instance is hosting a custom application developed upon Site-Studio components. There is a new and improved version of Site-Studio available with 11g upgrade which provides several features out of the box. These will require development effort in current version if required to be implemented. Some of the features for example are: 1. Content Categorizer 2. Content Tracker 3. Content Basket

8 9 10

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4. Etc. Rendition management is poor in 10gR4 version of oracle UCM. Applications like CRC have custom implementation for rendition management right now. This custom implementation is now outdated and is not living up to the standards of current web. These features need upgrade which is provided out of box in oracle UCM 11g version. Retention management is poor in oracle UCM 10g version. All oracle UCM instance being implemented at Colt lack proper retention policy due to which Colt is having problem in managing their content and with disposition process. Live example for this is current Intranet instance require support team to manually restore the expired contents so the end site remains functional and in proper shape with respect to UI. Lack of video content support in oracle UCM 10gR4 XTRAC application which is hooking to IPM/UCM instance is releasing a new version on 1st half of 2014 which needs a repository which is CMIS complaint. Currently IPM/UCM instance is not fully CMIS compliant. In order to continue supporting XTRAC IPM/UCM instance needs to be CMIS compliant and upgraded to oracle UCM 11g.

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Factors Against UCM Upgrade

# 1 Description Current version of oracle UCM i.e. 10gR4 is still not out of support from Oracle. Even if it goes out of support next year (which is not confirmed yet) Colt still have 3 years grace period for extended support. Oracle UCM upgrade from 10gR4 to 11g requires additional cost in terms of licensing. As architecture to oracle UCM 11g is completely based on weblogic server . Hence additional license cost will be associated with each processor.

Proposed Architectures
2 sets of architecture proposal are being suggested based on: 1. Cost effectiveness 2. Business support 3. Minimum Impact

Architecture Proposal 01: This architecture takes business support on highest priority and suggests changes to the current oracleUCM architecture at Colt Architecture Proposal 02: This architecture takes cost effectiveness and minimum impact on top priority and suggests changes to the current oracle UCM architecture at Colt

1. Architecture Proposal 01

# 1

Instance # New Colt .Net Instance

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Intranet Instance

IPM/UCM Instance

Configuration 5 node cluster 1 node for contribution 4 node for consumption Oracle 11g version Database indexing Oracle 11g database with failover 2 node cluster Oracle 11g version Verity indexing Oracle 11g database with failover 2 node cluster Oracle 11g version Database indexing Oracle 11g database with failover

Applications 1. Colt .Net 2. Colt Online 3. CRC

1. Intranet

1. Financial Document Management 2. Contract Management 3. XTRAC 4. E-Order

Benefits of this architecture: 1. Each instance can leverage the new out of the box features of UCM with CMIS compatibility 2. Improved performance 3. Improved collaboration

4. Improved UI experience 5. New means for contribution 6. Implementation for SSO and integration with external system is easy and most of the times out of the box with minor configuration changes only 7. XTRAC can use CMIS complaint services with this instance now Drawbacks of this architecture: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. High cost change Increased license cost for weblogic servers Increased cost and effort in migration Increased cost and effort in regression testing Problem for IPM/UCM instance which state Financial Document Management using 80% space is still there in this architecture proposal

2. Architecture Proposal 02

# 1

Instance # New Colt .Net Instance

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Intranet Instance

IPM/UCM Instance

IPM/UCM Instance1

Configuration 5 node cluster 1 node for contribution 4 node for consumption Oracle 10gR4 version Database indexing Oracle 11g database with failover 2 node cluster Oracle 10gR4 version Verity indexing Oracle 11g database with failover 2 node cluster Oracle 10gR4 version Database indexing Oracle 11g database with failover 2 node cluster Oracle 11g version Database indexing Oracle 11g database with failover

Applications 1. Colt .Net 2. Colt Online 3. CRC

1. Intranet

1. Financial Document Management

1. Contract Management 2. XTRAC 3. E-Order

Benefits of this architecture: 1. XTRAC can use CMIS complaint services with this instance now 2. Minimum cost involved

3. Minimum regression testing required 4. Problem for IPM/UCM instance which state Financial Document Management using 80% space will be solved with this architecture proposal

Drawbacks of this architecture: 1. Procurement of a new environment for splitting Financial document management from other 3 applications i.e. (XTRAC, E-Order and Contract Management) 2. All the other system will operate on old version of oracle UCM i.e. 10gR4 only which may get out of support after 3 years and same activity may be required again to make changes in architecture with more complex application on them