There is quite a buzz now a day about D2 which
was developed by a company called C6 and later on acquired by EMC2.
I am working on D2 for couple of years now and for the
same reason I am very excited to share few things about D2 with you all.
D2 is a fully configurable web application designed to create tailor made solution effectively within short period of time by simplifying the application implementation via configuration rather than code. D2 interface is built on ActiveX platform.
D2 mainly comprises of two applications
i.e. D2-Client and D2-Config.
D2-Client:
D2-Client is user friendly graphical interface to work on documents. It provides a rich and highly personalized user experience.
The general view of the D2-Client application is similar to the Windows Explorer concept. A cabinet and a folder tree on the left allow users to browse the structure and a content pane on the right that shows the content of the selected cabinets or folders.
One of the interesting feature it provides that by selecting a document, we can easily locate the document, view all the versions, check all the renditions available, view the audit trail entries , check any workflow is running on that document and many more by just clicking on the tabs available in the lower pane of the user work space.
D2-Config:
D2 provides most of the buisness rules as configurable features.
Using D2-Config one can easily and quickly configure
or map business rules as it uses familiar spread sheet type configuration.
D2-Config consists of group of in built configurable
modules which enables user to configure features like security, properties page, life cycles, inheritance, autolinking, autonaming and workflows etc.
Few points to highlight about D2 solution are
1. Object Model of D2 is different from the traditional Documentum object model.
2. Security is implemented in different way. Security objects are stored as d2_acl object type.
3. Integration of existing documentum lifecycle is not possible in D2. D2 manage lifecycle in different way. Beautiful part of D2 lifecycle is its easy to deploy and for that we just need to save the configuration. We can easily enforce many condition on different states like condition on document property, permissions etc and also perform many actions like update of one property, create new version, apply autolink and request for rendition etc without using custom code.
4. There is another configurable feature named batch lifecycle which
we can use to update state of several documents in one go.
5. Workflows created through workflow manager can be integrated in D2. D2 also provides some advance features like electronic signature which we can configure with the workflow settings. We can also configure custom mail as well as reminder mail with it.
6. Autonaming and Autolinking of documents are one of the in built out of the box features. We just need to configure it as per our buisness requirements.
7. Value assistance and data mapping is very easy with the in built configurable feature Dictionary and Taxonomy.
8. Check in and Check out functionality is highly configurable. By
default document versions are managed as starting from 0.1 but there is option
of changing it to 1.0.
9. D2 supports full text to advanced search and also it provides one unique feature Query form where we can easily create our own queries combining operators and Document properties which in turn make the searching simpler.
10. There is another unique feature i.e. Email where you can configure different email notification based on specific workflow events such as dm_completedworkitem ,dm_startworkflow etc.
10. There is another unique feature i.e. Email where you can configure different email notification based on specific workflow events such as dm_completedworkitem ,dm_startworkflow etc.
11. Restrict access to both the application i.e. D2-Client and D2-Config is easily configurable using group names [Only group members mentioned in the D2 config can access applications].
We have seen many times that at the time of final deployment, requirements are changed with the changing business scenarios. This is where D2 comes into the picture by providing functionalities via configurations rather than customizations, thus reducing custom code, providing rapid deployment which in turn helps to adapt changing business scenarios with ease.
I will try to elaborate on different features of D2 in my subsequent blogs. Thanks for reading :-)
