cURL it !!

curl

In this post I would like to highlight how you can setup and use one of the powerful tool curl in windows machine. Out of many features, I found curl very useful while testing rest/soap services. 

cURL is a command line tool for getting or sending files using URL syntax.

It supports a range of common Internet protocols, currently including HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, LDAP, DAP, DICT, TELNET etc.

You can download the software from below location:

Download site: https://curl.haxx.se/download.html

Installation is very easy in windows.

1.       Extract the zip file and keep it in a location in your computer.

2.       Go to http://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html and download the digital certificate file named ca-bundle.crt.

3.       Add the curl folder path to your Windows PATH environment variable so that the curl command is available from any location at the command prompt.

Testing with curl command

I mainly used this during some activity related to salesforce. So example urls can be different in your case. Now you are ready to get your hands dirty ;-)

a.       Open command prompt and type :- 

curl https://ap1.salesforce.com/services/data

b.      In proxy enabled system ,you may get Timed out issue.

c.       Curl support proxy so you can type the command above like below

                                    i.     curl https://ap1.salesforce.com/services/data -H "X-PrettyPrint:1" --proxy <proxy_name>:<port> --proxy-user <proxy_user>:<proxy_user_credential>

                                     ii.            In above command -H "X-PrettyPrint:1" is added to get the output in formatted way. You can test the output without that part to get the clear idea.

d.      You may face the certification issue while executing the above command. In development environment you can skip this part by adding -k after curl command. For example-

                                                 i.   curl -k https://ap1.salesforce.com/services/data -H "X-PrettyPrint:1" --proxy <proxy_name>:<port> --proxy-user <proxy_user>:<proxy_user_credential>

e.      For help or other usage you can simply type the command curl --help

Hope this will be helpful... :-)

Note: Blogs which I have written are totally my personal view based on my personal experience.

Why D2?

Why D2? (Old Draft version)

In my earlier blog, I have tried to discuss some out of the box features of D2. Now in this blog, I would like to touch base why customer should choose D2 as their content management system.

With the introduction of D2 4.5 and 4.6 recently EMC has given us one of the strongest product suites to manage business critical requirements and integration solution.

In D2 4.6 some major performance and security improvements has been done. They have improved the installation module as well but still there is scope of improvement.  

There are many reasons why you should choose D2 as your Content Management Solution. Below are few scenarios which helps you to take the decision.

1.      D2 is all about configuration. D2 provides more personalized user experience because of its configuration capabilities which in turn helps to

-      Increase productivity

-      Reduce the time of implementation and go live

-      Decrease the cost of end user training.

-      Less maintenance & upgrade effort

-      Easier to manage last minute requirement changes from the business.

        The configuration options of D2 are very powerful but there may be specific needs from customer which can be addressed using D2 customization options as well.

2.     Document management requirements like creation/import, edit, check in &  check out, version control, auditing are available as out of the box features and well managed.

3.      One of the important feature i.e. annotation which is required by almost every business divisions so that they can collaborate within the team. D2 has unique solution for that as well. D2 has out of the box feature which support annotation in native format. PDF annotation can be done with the help of third party tools. For example OpenAnnotate or ARender or BRAVA.

4.      D2 has a unique feature of comparing documents of different versions which help users or auditors to track changes done at different version level.

5.      One of the most interesting feature of Documentum D2 is the external widget which can be used to integrate any other application in the organization or showing dashboard. Overall it opens up the way to integrate other platforms with your DMS system.

6.        Searching is a critical process for every domain. D2 has outstanding search capabilities. There are many ways to provide search capabilities to end user like

o   Simple search

o   Advanced search

o   Query Form

o   Facet search.

7.     Folder creation based on attribute values using only configuration.

8.     PDF watermarking using C2.

9.     Introduction of new D2 REST API for integrations.

10.    D2 Migration Utility is newly introduced from D2 4.6 onwards. The migration utility performs deletion and recreation of data in the repository.

Many configurations are protected with ACLs now but it leads to a change in the object model. This process is irreversible and it is highly recommended to take backup of the content server and the database before migration. If you have many objects in your existing D2 tables then this process can take longer time than expected.

11.       The ability to restore session to the last browsed location in case of session time-out, logout is one of the feature which I like the most.