Glossary

Terms Specific to Content Manager OnDemand

Application Group: A Group of Applications. An Application Group ('AppGroup' or 'AG') defines index, storage management, retention, and expiration criteria. All Applications that belong to a specific Application Group will have the same fields for indexing, will have their Application data stored for the same amount of time (either in Cache or in a Storage Node), and expire in the same fashion.

Application: An Application is a definition that describes the data being stored in an Application Group. Applications define the type of document (AFP, PDF, Line Data, Image, or User Defined), indexing method, indexing parameters (where to find the index values inside a document or report), and preferences for how the document should be displayed after it has been retrieved.

Folder: A Folder determines how the data inside Application Groups will be presented to the user. It allows you to define search fields, the order that those fields appear in, default values and/or required fields for searches, which fields are displayed when a search is completed, and allows you to assign user-friendly names to index fields (like "Customer Number" rather than CustNum"). Multiple Application Groups can be added to a single folder, allowing users to perform searches across multiple reports or data types with one query.

Storage Set: A Storage Set connects Content Manager OnDemand to Tivoli Storage Manager ("TSM") for the purpose of long-term archiving to storage devices like Magneto-Optical or WORM optical discs, tape libraries, or pools of hard disc storage.

Printer: A printer definition is used to provide access to server-side printing.

User: A user is, well, a CMOD user. Users must be defined in order to log into the CMOD server.

Group: A Group is a collection of users. Groups can define access permissions to specific Application Groups, Folders, Cabinets, or Printers.

Cache: "Cache Storage" is a local filesystem of fast magnetic disk (hard drives) for the purpose of storing the most frequently accessed data, so that retrievals are extremely fast. Data stored inside a Storage Node is generally a MINIMUM of 10x slower to retrieve, due to the overhead of communicating with TSM, and the slower devices generally used with TSM.

Segment: In order to keep database queries fast, OnDemand uses database table segmentation. Before DB2 supported table segmentation natively, the Content Manger OnDemand developers decided to split index data into tables of 10 million rows each. Using this method keeps search performance linear, as only the tables containing documents in the date range you're looking for ( for example, 3 months, or 1 year) are actually searched.

User Exit: A User Exit is a way for advanced users to customize the behavior of OnDemand, by writing custom programs ("exits") that modify data as it flows through CMOD.

User Defined Data Type: Content Manager OnDemand supports several types of data natively -- AFP, PDF, XML, Line Data, and Images. If you want to store a different type of data, you can configure CMOD to use a "User Defined" data type. User Defined data types allow OnDemand to store almost anything.

ACIF: ACIF stands for AFP Control and Indexing Facility. Originally a mainframe tool, ACIF can convert Line Data to AFP for storage inside CMOD, or extract index data automatically from reports.

Generic Index: For data types that can't be indexed automatically, Content Manger OnDemand supports 'Generic' index files, which are specially-formatted text files that contain the index values for individual documents. Generic Index files are used primarily for loading Image format files (TIFF, PNG, GIF, JPEG), but can be used in combination with User Defined data types to load almost any type of digital data into CMOD.

PDF Indexer: In order to load PDF files automatically, the PDF Indexer defines areas inside PDF files that contain the index values for documents.

XML Indexer: A new feature in CMOD v9.5, the XML indexer allows you to select data from inside XML data, and load it into CMOD.

Full Text Indexer: Introduced in OnDemand v9.0, the Full Text Indexer is a component that creates full text indexes for data stored in CMOD.

Centera: EMC's WORM solution using custom software and commodity hard drives. WORM is enforced by software, not by any irreversible physical change, which allows the re-use of storage space once data has reached its retention period and deleted.

COLD: Computer Output to Laser Disc - a generic term that referred to data storage systems that stored digital files on Laser Disc, for example, Magneto-Optical or WORM discs.

Content Management: A generic term referring to the storage and retrieval of data with centralized control and fixed methodology.

ECM: Enterprise Content Management - a newer, more generic term than COLD. Refers to a variety of Content Management Solutions, all with different features (Workflow, Records Management, Archiving, etc.)

ERM: Enterprise Report Management - specifically, the storage of reports and records for an organization. The narrower focus of ERM is the long-term archiving, retention, searching, and retrieval of documents, primarily for legal or regulatory compliance.

Magneto Optical: A storage technology that uses both lasers and magnetic fields to create an optical disc that is both re-writable, and impervious to magnetic fields. Magneto-Optical discs have been known to survive catastrophic events like floods and smoke damage.

GIF: Graphic Interchange Format - a rather old and quite limited image format with limited colours (256) and relatively poor compression by today's standards.

JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group - a method of 'lossy' compression, primarily used for full colour photographs.

NAS: Network Attached Storage - a class of storage devices, primarily accessed over a standard network connection.

SnapLock: A technology that locks files from modification on NAS devices by setting the modification timestamp on a file to a point in the future.

Tape: Magnetic Tape Storage - similar to Audio Cassettes and Video Tape, Tape drives use a long, thin ribbon of plastic coated in magnetic particles to store data. Tape has traditionally had much higher storage capacity than hard drives or optical storage. Around 2005, long-term storage on hard drives became more appealing as the capacity of a single device increased, and power consumption decreased.

TIFF: Tagged Image File Format - a graphic image format primarily used to store black and white or greyscale scanned images. Originally developed by Adobe, TIFF has become an international standard.

Tivoli Storage Manager: Tivoli Storage Manager (or TSM) is used to connect OnDemand to a wide variety of storage technologies, such as tape, tape libraries, optical drives, optical jukeboxes, or proprietary devices like EMC Centera. TSM has three main uses - Archive, Backup, and HSM. CMOD utilizes the 'Archive' component to provide long-term management of data loaded into CMOD.

WORM: Write-Once, Read-Many - a type of unalterable, permanent storage, primarily optical disks in the years prior to 2005, but also magnetic tape and magnetic hard disc drives.