Loading user-defined data

IBM® Content Manager OnDemand provides support for storing and retrieving almost any type of data. For example, Content Manager OnDemand provides support for AFP, Line, PDF, GIF, JFIF (JPEG), PCX, and TIFF data. However, Content Manager OnDemand is not limited to maintaining these types of data. Content Manager OnDemand provides the User-Defined data type to support almost any other type of data that you want to store in the system. For example, you can configure the system to process Lotus® WordPro documents, so that when a user retrieves one of the files from the system, Content Manager OnDemand automatically starts Lotus WordPro to open the document.

To store user-defined data on the system, you must create index data for the input files and you must register the file type of the input file with Content Manager OnDemand. The file type determines the program that is started to open a file when a user retrieves one of the files from the system. The file type must also be registered with the client operating system. If your Content Manager OnDemand system supports client programs that run under different operating systems, then you must register the specified file type on all of the client operating systems.

Content Manager OnDemand provides the Generic Indexer so that you can index user-defined data. You specify the index data for the input files that you want to index with the Generic Indexer in a parameter file. The parameter file contains the index field names and values and identifies the input files that you want to process. You can create up to 128 index fields for each input file that you want to load into the system, providing many ways for users to query and retrieve documents. The number of index fields that you define usually depends on how your users retrieve documents from the system. For example, you might want to define index fields for the date, author, and subject or purpose of the user-defined data.

Before you can load user-defined data into the system, you must define an application group to manage the storage of the files, an application to specify the physical and logical attributes of the input files, and a folder to let users search for and retrieve the files. This section contains an example that shows how to define Lotus WordPro files to Content Manager OnDemand. It provides an overview of defining the application group, application, and folder. For details and a comprehensive example of defining input data to OnDemand, see the following sections: