General FAQ's

Question 1: What is FileNet Technology?

Answer:

FileNet is an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution product suite from IBM. Enterprises uses FileNet to manage their content and business processes.

FileNet P8 platform, the latest version of FileNet system, provides a framework for developing custom enterprise systems, offering much functionality out of the box and capable of being customized to manage a specific business process.

FileNet Enterprise Content Management (ECM) product suite includes:

Content Management Products:

FileNet Content Manager (CE) – CE is the core content management solution for the FileNet P8 platform.

FileNet Image Services (IS) – IS is used to store and manage documents.

Business Process Management Products:

FileNet BPM - BPM manages workflows to reduce cycle times and to improve productivity by streamlining and improving complex processes. BPM component includes Process Engine, Process Analyzer and Process Simulator.

Question 2: What is document lifecycle?

Answer:

Document lifecycle in FileNet P8 is a sequence of states (like Draft, Review, Publish, close etc) that a document will go though over its lifetime, as well as the action that are triggered when document move from one state to another.

A user or application can move the doc forward or backward in its lifecycle.

Question 3: Does FileNet component CE, PE, AE support server clustering? What kind of clustering is supported by FileNet P8?

Answer:

FileNet P8 platform supports Asymmetric, Symmetric, N + 1, and N to M clusters. This includes FileNet Content Engine, Process Engine and Application Engine.

Asymmetric clusters include both active and passive servers. i.e. In case of Asymmetric 1-to-1 cluster, there is one active and another passive server. This is simplest form of clustering.

Symmetric clusters include all the active servers. In Symmetric clusters different servers run different services but in case of fail over, multiple services are be moved on to one server.

Please note: While FileNet CE, PE, AE supports active/active clustering, FileNet IS supports only active/passive clustering.

Question 5: Which protocol is used by FileNet P8 Process Engine (PE) to connect to Content Engine (CE) or Application Engine (AE)?

Answer:

IIOP is used by PE to communicate with CE and AE.

IIOP means 'Internet Inter-ORB Protocol'
ORB means 'Object Request Broker'

As CE is installed on AE, it uses direct API calls to communicate with AE.