Oracle SES10g and Stellent
December 10, 2010
I have a stack of “read later” documents. I was waiting for a Skype call, and I read the October 2010 Oracle white paper “Searching Oracle Content Server (Stellent) with Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g.” The title caught my attention because SES is now at version 11g, but the October 2010 white paper focuses on Oracle SES10g. Interesting.
If you are a Stellent customer, you may want to check out the white paper. If you compete with Oracle, the white paper is a must read. Several points jumped out when I worked my way through the 25 pages of text and diagrams.
First, the good stuff begins on page 10 of the white paper. Here’s the passage that signals the work ahead for the never-to-be-fired Oracle database administrator:
“The first challenge is to retrieve the data and the metadata from the Content Server repository into SES.”
So much for seamless integration of the Stellent and the SES10g software.
Second, the method for mapping metadata does not specify who does the mapping. A bit of noodling leads me to the hypothesis that the “smart” software does mapping, then the lucky Oracle database administrator gets to dive in. In short, mapping fields and document attributes is likely to be a bit of work.
Third, the security steps are no big surprise. What did catch my attention was the need to install an additional security component into Content Server and then take a snapshot of the repository. My hunch is that one wants to have sufficient system and storage and resources to handle beefy repositories. Running out of space is likely to mandate going back to square one. Not a hint of graceful recovery or even a checklist of “Do This Before You Start” items.
Fourth, a number of components and functions have to be configured by the system administrator. Once again: hands on work.
Oracle DBAs have job security by design I opine.
Stephen E Arnold, December 10, 2010
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One Response to “Oracle SES10g and Stellent”
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Steven, The wording in the white paper may suggest otherwise, but I deal with customers using this connector almost daily and my experience is that for 95% of customers it is fairly easy to set up and does not need DBA-type help. And the connector is quite powerful — it automatically pushes changes in UCM content out to SES based on an internal API.
The 5% of customers who will need help have complicated security configurations (e.g. nested user/group structures in Active Directory). These are scenarios which you cannot reasonably automate.
The installation of the additional component (“SES Crawler Export”) in UCM/Stellent is standard practice for UCM Administrators
SES does the mapping via Web based Admin GUI, so no DBA needed. Custom metadata is exported and mapped by default from UCM/Stellent.