In this chapter, we provide an overview of the IBM Content Manager OnDemand (Content Manager OnDemand) system. We describe how Content Manager OnDemand manages reports and index data. We also provide information to help you better understand how Content Manager OnDemand works.

In this chapter, we cover the following topics:

To compete in today’s global business environment, businesses must increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. Conflicting business requirements, such as increasing productivity while reducing costs, and increasing personalization yet at the same time expanding to larger customer bases can be achieved only through more streamlined and coordinated processes. Content Manager OnDemand helps address these issues by securely storing information and managing its delivery on demand whenever and wherever it is needed.

Content Manager OnDemand provides high speed archival and retrieval of information, benefiting any organization that requires instant access to information, hardcopy replacement, or long-term archival of data. A Content Manager OnDemand system can support small office environments as well as large enterprise installations with hundreds or thousands of system users. It can dramatically improve productivity and customer service in many businesses by providing fast access to information that is stored in the system.

Content Manager OnDemand is a robust report management system that enables you to do the following tasks:

In summary, Content Manager OnDemand enables you to gain control of your information by providing access to your business’ data, as needed, regardless of the size of the business or the hardware platform. Content Manager OnDemand improves your organization’s bottom line by helping you become more efficient and responsive.

Figure 1-1 presents an overview of the Content Manager OnDemand (OnDemand) system.

Content Manager OnDemand client programs are run on workstations that are attached to the network and communicate with the Content Manager OnDemand servers. The Content Manager OnDemand library server manages a database of information about both the users of the system and the reports or data that are stored on the system. The Content Manager OnDemand object server manages the data on disk or tape storage devices. A Content Manager OnDemand system has one library server and one or more object servers. An object server can operate on the same server or node as the library server or on a different server or node than the library server. In some cases (based on system requirements or on IBM System i®), the library server and the object server are packaged as a single executable file.

Content Manager OnDemand client programs operate on various environments, including personal computers running on Windows, web browsers, and mobile devices. Using the client program, users can search for and retrieve reports that are stored on the system. Specifically, users can construct queries and search for reports, retrieve documents from Content Manager OnDemand, view, print, and fax copies or pages of documents, and attach electronic notes to the pages of a document.

Content Manager OnDemand servers manage control information and index data, store and retrieve documents and resource group files, and process query requests from Content Manager OnDemand client programs. The documents can be on disk and tape storage volumes. New reports can be loaded into Content Manager OnDemand every day. This way, Content Manager OnDemand can retrieve the latest information that is generated by application programs.

When a user submits a query, and the client program sends a search request to the Content Manager OnDemand library server. The library server returns a list of the documents that match the query to the user. When the user selects a document for viewing, the client program retrieves a copy of the document from the object server where the document is stored, opens a viewing window, and displays the document.

In this section, we examine some of the basic concepts of Content Manager OnDemand:

As we examine these concepts, we use an example company. Our fictitious company is called AFinancial Co. AFinancial Co is one of the largest custodians of financial transactions in the world. It is one of the leaders in managing customer assets, providing financial services and foreign exchange services. It is also one of the leading credit card providers in the world.

The timely delivery of information and reports is fundamental to maintaining this leadership status. Products and services that provide real-time, online access to a client's account and fund information are key to competitive differentiation and are key to client retention. AFinancial Co’s clients want personalized fund information, in various standard formats, which are delivered through both web and desktop interfaces.

A report is one or more pages of data that is typically generated on a periodic basis by a computer software system. Content Manager OnDemand documents represent indexed groups of pages from a report. A Content Manager OnDemand document can be a logical section of a large report, such as an individual account statement within a report of thousands of statements. A Content Manager OnDemand document can also represent a physical portion of a large report. For example, if a large report does not contain logical groups of pages, such as transaction logs, Content Manager OnDemand can divide the report into groups of pages. The groups of pages are individually indexed and can be retrieved much more efficiently than the entire report.

Documents are identified by date, with one or more other fields, such as customer name, customer number, or invoice number. A date is optional but highly recommended for optimizing document search performance.

Our example fictitious company, AFinancial Co, prints customer credit card statements on a monthly basis. This report, the customer credit card statements (Customer Statements), consists of thousands of individual customer statements. The company also prints transaction logs on a monthly basis. This second report, the transaction log (Transaction Report), contains thousands of customer transactions per month. The company must load these two reports into Content Manager OnDemand so that their data can be stored, then easily searched, retrieved, and viewed later. Let us look at how these two large reports might be broken up into individual Content Manager OnDemand documents.

Reports are “loaded” into the Content Manager OnDemand system. A Content Manager OnDemand application describes how the report is to be divided into documents. Figure 1-2 on page 8 illustrates two reports, their associated Content Manager OnDemand applications and documents. Let us look at how the associated applications divide the reports into Content Manager
OnDemand documents.

The first one we look at is the Customer Statements report. For this example, the report consists of 63,097 individual customer statements. An administrator can define a Statement application for this report that breaks the report up into logical documents. The Statement application uses the document indexing method to divide the report into documents that are based on customer name or customer number. Each statement in the report becomes a document in Content Manager OnDemand. Users can retrieve a statement by specifying the date and any combination of customer name and number.

Some reports might not have a logical way of breaking up into individual documents. For example, the Transaction Report is not sorted by customer name or number. The report is generated based on the transactions of the day and time, and the customers that are associated with the transactions. In this case, we can break up the report into groups of pages. An administrator can define a Trans application for the report that contains lines of sorted transaction data. The Trans application uses the report indexing method to divide the report into documents. Each group of 100 pages in the report becomes a document in Content Manager OnDemand. Each group is indexed using the first and last sorted transaction values (transaction date and number) that occur in the group. Users can retrieve the group of pages that contains a specific transaction number by specifying the date and the transaction number. Content Manager OnDemand retrieves the document that contains the value that is entered by the user.

To summarize this example, as shown in Figure 1-2:

The terms application, application group, folder, and cabinet represent how Content Manager OnDemand stores, manages, retrieves, displays, and prints reports and index data. When you define a report or type of data to Content Manager OnDemand, an administrator must create an application and assign the application to an application group. Before users can search for and retrieve documents, an administrator must create or update a folder to use the application group and application. Cabinets allow users to manage folders and enable them to navigate folders more easily.

An application describes the physical characteristics of a report to Content Manager OnDemand. Typically, you define an application for each program that produces output to be stored in Content Manager OnDemand. The application includes information about the format of the data, the orientation of data on the page, the paper size, the record length, and the code page of the data. The application also includes parameters that the indexing program uses to locate and extract index data and processing instructions that Content Manager OnDemand uses to load index data in the database and documents on
storage volumes.

An application group contains the storage management attributes of and index fields for the data that you load into Content Manager OnDemand. When you load a report into Content Manager OnDemand, you must identify the application group where Content Manager OnDemand loads the index data and stores
the documents.

An application group is a collection of one or more Content Manager OnDemand applications with common indexing and storage management attributes. You typically group several related reports in an application group so that users can access the information that is contained in the reports with a single query. All of the applications in the application group must be indexed on at least one of the same fields, for example, customer name, account number, or date.

A folder is the user’s way to query and retrieve data that is stored in Content Manager OnDemand. A folder provides users with a convenient way to find related information that is stored in Content Manager OnDemand, regardless of the source of the information or how the data was prepared.

A folder allows an administrator to set up a common query panel for several application groups that might use different indexing schemes so that a user can retrieve the data with a single query. For example, a folder called “Customer Information” might contain customer credit card statements, checking and saving accounts, and mortgage payment information, which represent information that is stored in different application groups, which are defined by different applications, and created by different programs.

A cabinet is a container for folders. You can use cabinets to manage folders and enable users to navigate to folders more easily. A folder can belong to one or more cabinets.

Figure 1-3 summarizes these concepts.

Content Manager OnDemand provides two methods of indexing data:

Document indexing is used for reports that contain logical items, such as customer name or number. Each of the items in a report can be individually indexed on values, such as account number, customer name, and balance. Content Manager OnDemand supports up to 128 index values per item. With document indexing, the user is not necessarily required to know about reports or report cycles to retrieve a document from Content Manager OnDemand.

Report indexing is used for reports that contain many pages of the same type of data, such as a transaction log. Each line in the report usually identifies a specific transaction, and it is not cost effective to index each line. Content Manager OnDemand stores the report as groups of pages and indexes each group.

When reports include a sorted transaction value (for example, transaction date and number), Content Manager OnDemand can index the data on the transaction value. This is done by extracting the beginning and ending transaction values for each group of pages and storing the values in the database. This type of indexing lets users retrieve a specific transaction
value directly.

On z/OS and Multiplatforms systems, the Content Manager OnDemand server can be implemented as a library server and one or more object servers that are on one or more nodes that are connected to a Internet Protocol network. On System i, both the library server and object server are packaged as a single executable. For the Content Manager OnDemand system overview, see Figure 1-1 on page 5.

A Content Manager OnDemand library server maintains a central database about the reports that are stored in Content Manager OnDemand. The database also contains information about the objects that are defined to the system, such as users, groups, printers, application groups, applications, folders, cabinets, and storage sets. The database manager provides the database engine and utilities to administer the database. The library server processes client logons, queries, and print requests and updates to the database. The major functions that run on the library server are the request manager, the database manager, and the server print manager.

A Content Manager OnDemand object server maintains documents on cache storage volumes and, optionally, works with an archive storage manager to maintain documents on archive media, such as tape storage libraries. An object server loads data, retrieves documents, and expires documents. The major functions that run on an object server are the cache storage manager, data loading and maintenance programs, and optionally, the archive
storage manager.

The basic Content Manager OnDemand configuration is a library server and an object server on the same physical system or node. This single library or object server configuration supports the database functions and cache storage on one system. You can add an archive storage manager to the single library or object server configuration to maintain documents on archive media.

On some platforms, you can also configure your Content Manager OnDemand system with a library server on one node and one or more object servers on different nodes. This configuration is known as a distributed library/object server system. The distributed library or object server configuration supports caching of documents on different servers. You can add an archive storage manager to one or more of the object servers to maintain documents on archive media that are attached to different servers.

A Content Manager OnDemand server environment contains
several components: