Metadata for the brave

Metadata  in Livelink (Yawn ContentServer) is mostly by a Object Called Categories.A Category Object again is of subtype 131 and it can have versions.Its content or version file looks like XML and translates the data structure for use with Livelink.When some one adds a Category to an Object like Document,Folder etc  what you are essentially doing is requesting the latest copy of the Category Template(131) or it will be the Category applied to the parent container.Then it goes through an oscript/weblingo layer where it paints the structure like is it a Text? is it Mandatory and so on.Increasingly I see OT advising customers to use SETS and that too with Multiple Values.I tried to stay away from SETS in my design because it is next to impossible to write reports when there is more than one value involved 🙂

A Picture is worth a thousand words so I am showing a Category called SapCategory as you can see I have some that are very self descriptive however these terminology is probably worth understanding.In Livelink projects you will affix useful metadata{ a set of categories(131), some Classifications(199) or RM Classifications (551) }.OT has prided itself on capability of its search and indexing engine(after all OT was the first guys to index the OED and that greatly increases the work they put in this ) so all this metadata that you put and inherit it down to millions of items is supposed to find you patterns of knowledge in your organization.The xECM side of the house puts technical categories so does AGA so that in first shot looking at the object metadata one can even say what it purports to be.Classifications and RM Classifications look like category metadata but they allow alternate taxonomies and navigation structures.

MVA-Multi Valued Attribute indicate by the + and – signs.In any case if you only have one Value also it is internally a List of values.On top of it now all Livelink servers can have that in more than one language . OT does not the make category metadata multi language but our good friends at Cassia ECM make it and sell it through OT.

Set -The Set is a place holder where in you can define more and more primitive datatypes and it looks aesthetically pleasing(?) or even easier to understand data.Both Sets and Categories subtype will say AttrType=-18 and AttrID indicates the position.

For techies see my revelation to the world I think the link is permanently lost

There is a simple Request Handler called attributes.dump ( perhaps it is hidden in the admin.index pages and you might need a SA prv) you will see that the Set Identifier does not have a Attribute ID

Nobody from OpenText has told the programming world or developers how to look at this DataStructure well not in so many words at least.. Everyone is using their own methods do something.How many SET parsing/example  requests happen in the OT KB and OT answers cryptically? Or as a Java or a C# programmer is one supposed to be that intelligent to figure everything out? I believe it is very shortsighted of OT to push towards their professional services,or WebReports to achieve anything and everything.Since the move from LAPI some hobby programmers have shown the parsing.I have had countless requests from developers who wanted to see how to go about it so this is a way to help them. Actually since all ReturnValues are coded for OOP apparently this is much easier than in LAPI days but still a new programmer cannot be expected to become a livelink knowledgeable person for participating in one project.

Imagine a Node Object like Document or Folder has had a category attached,then its values are in its MetaData Object.The MetaData Object consists of AttributeGroups which are akin to List of Categories.So if you have applied 7 Categorise expect 7.These 7 will show you empty shells or filled shells of information.

So I have this and another category attached /applied to an object

As you can see those are the two categories or an AttributeGroups Object of two AttributeGroup.OK so if you isolate one AttributeGroup you will get the individual keys(Attributes).OK then you need to test/cast these complex structures from their Livelink given out DataValue to things people can understand Namely StrinValue,IntegerValue and DateValue.Now if a Set is encountered you will get a TableValue object.Now the TableValue will contain a excel row like representation and is a RowValue Object.Once you isolate the RowValue into its DataValue you will get its IntegerValue,StringValue and such like.Good thing they did not allow a Set inside a Set 🙂

The key of an Attribute is made up of <category dataid>_<version>_<attributeID>

So hopefully the code I post in C# helps a poor soul.Now please understand that the Category Data Structure is a pretty complicated way how the Data is shown,how the Data is held in a Table and how the reporting table has been considered. When we were in the LAPI era the entire structure was given to you as a LLValue Object out of which you had to get the Types isolated and program.This was me in 2004 battling out a worked out example in LAPI documentation   which actually did not work if you actually cut and pasted the sample.So I just took it as a challenge and trying to learn the OT debugger and its Script actually helped me with it

 

Link to Code File coming soon 🙂 One thing I noticed in 2017 against CS16 is now OT has already built a category called “External Att” with some commonly asked of functionality Good Job…

Hopefully they might be trying to get rid of the “Additional Node Attributes” piece in OT

Screen Cap of when I run the code against a Node in LL.You can optimize the loops when you understand how the code is supposed to be written.Frankly my intention is to show  you how  to iterate the DataStructure.

 

A C# file that I wrote that takes a NodeID in Livelink and spits out Category Info

Including Sets & MVA

 

 

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Code Demonstration Pages

Mostly this will consist of CWS or SOAP samples.My setup is against a CS16 computer with OTDS but when I test I make sure I can login as ‘Admin’.For ease I write this using the Visual Studio C# express.Note Java WSAPI clients has differing Syntax,my blog has some hints but for the most part it will be adaptable.Note programmers who work in this are encoraged to understand flow of your code into the livelink server see my posts on a proper way to interpret errors you are getting in your program.when time permits I will post a a flow diagram.

What is CWS ?   How do you DEBUG ?  How to look at a SOAP Envelope?
You just have to get the shell from OT for starting java dev. Java data structures are less forgiving in their get/sets than C# as well. Common misconceptions like to write java client livelink has to run in tomcat all that is not true,the server part of livelink can be anything and the webservices hosted either way and you can write .net clients and java clients

A few years back the OT community had a lot of programmers and they all contributed widely to communities.opentext.com .Very thoughtless of OT one fine morning they shutdown the site.Most of the code I wrote for public consumption I had in my personal workspace or google drive.This time I am just going to put them in my google drive.You just have to requests me to see it.Note I will not entertain any requests for obtaining software or consultation.I do this pro bono so I don’t lose touch.

How to Rename Nodes in C#	Link	Request by
Workflow Service Example	Link	Request by
Categories/Attributes manipulation in C#	Link	Request by
Beginners parsing example to Categories/Attributes C#	Link	Request by
How do you manipulate Multi Valued Attributes( MVA) Java Snippet	Link	Answering for a KB thread
Beginners Adding a Version to a Existing File JAVA	Link	Answering for a KB thread
How to set Mandatory Attributes in a move (No Not as simple as it sounds:)	Link	Answering for a KB thread
A C# example that shows SET parsing and MVA’s	Link	Answering for a KB thread

Why Oscript solutions are not passé

Over the years in my work with OpenText Livelink I am fortunate to associate myself with like minds and who like me share their code,goodwill and advice selflessly .I cherish and hold their friendship above all professional accolades I have ever got.Recently I had lunch with Ossie Moore  Ossie’s LinkedIn it was very short and I would have loved it to last longer as we could talk shop endlessly.Most of what I write in this has bearing to our lunch and he did steer this post. Ossie  for people who do not know him is quite a character.Let’s say you had a requirement,most of us would probably settle for a pretty decent code either in oscript,lapi as that was the predominant development methods one had at the time.Not Ossie he would probably write our kind of code and before releasing it would have at least two more better implementations,he would have thought about the user coming through the web,the other interfaces LL explorer and so on.That is the difference.

Let’s look at ECM deployments in major organizations.

X Organization has identified a massive unstructured data problem.X has a new manager on the block who has had experience with a technology vendor.Insert <vendorname> here. This is how most ECM deployments happen a lot of people passionate in some technology who would solutionize the deployment to suit the vendor.Most of them are assisted by Gartner, Forrester those kinds .I started working in OT technology before these rating companies came up with a barometer of wants so I am going to continue with my cynicism.

So after X Organization will roll out a OOB approach ,people are brought in.Naturally if the product is user friendly and easy its use will grow.Simple things like user activity,data growth etc are good ways to identify its usefulness.Now most people would want to send the link of the objects hoping that it won’t break on re-organizing the structure or re parenting as most of document work revolves around.So you may want to invest on something that people have put thought on like a GUID based system(Livelink, DCTM).Frankly I know only Livelink and DCTM very little. I hate Sharepoint (we call it $carepoint) with a passion because the smallest of things are so difficult to get  done.Good UI all the world has gone for it anything complex you have to buy or build with an array of .net developers different frameworks the works.It also could be that I have only been programming in that and spending time in LL so over the years the idiosyncracies of builder,CSIDE none of these matter to me now because Oscript really has not changed every much.Oscript is just a huge possibilities language. One of my mentors very famous in OT circles John Simon would joke like this.You have a problem you try solving in Oscript.You will spend about 3 to 4 days on it later to find out that what you need is totally available,no need to kludge just poor documentation that is all.

So if you were eager to get into using livelink to its full extent do these things

1. Challenge a OT person or a OT solution marketer to what they are offering you. Challenge them extremely hard if it is offered at $$$ a user or so.That is how they make their money on licenses.
2. Challenge if the pitch is towards Oscript is bad that spoils your chances of upgrade.There’s an element of truth in that.I have seen people hacking their way into core code,weblingo such no nos that shows inexperience and desperation. Oscript is not understanding the creation of a request handler,webnodeaction or eventscripting it is an all round knowledge of the product the passion about the product.You can immediately tell if the programmer knows anything because if they start saying about new subtypes you may want to ask them what prompted them to create a subtype, because many times those people have access to the oscript tutorials and the “Hello World” of oscript introduces them to that.You really want a Oscripter who will follow what OT advises them of doing in that case it is very rarely  a bad fit.
3. Challenge if the pitched solution ends up working only in the webgui what about EC,what about SOAP,what about REST,what about Search

Oscript has years to go if the LL solution is still being used by customers.It can be learned to work wonders for you.The other aspect and full credit to Ossie here is LL software is the most open product much more open than opensource a oscripter can see the entire internals of it so people like me,John,Ossie all have found bugs and we all engage the good OT developers on our finds.Most senior and passionate oscripters continue to do so.There ‘s so much openness and welcoming in the OT programming community,people like David Templeton ,Kyle  Swidrowich and a countless amount of good people who have been striving to keep this open and getting communities to try it out for a better product.They have helped me and a lot of others and you can also get in into the action.

You just need the drive and passion to master LL that is all it takes.Well that maybe true for any technology 🙂

SOAPUI one could use some lather

****************************************** ***START UPDATE 10/3/2016*****************

LAPI and its client installer has become very hard to find. Moreover clients written in LAPI  in say Java/.NET will only work if your Livelink a.k.a Content Server is of version less than CS16.Readers who are new to LL programming is encouraged to read this to the approach and not to the exact lines of the code.What I mean is when you used to program in LAPI you were basically passing parameters to discrete calls by modelling it based on the webgui of livelink .SOAP based webservices called CWS is also the same,so if you do not try to do the task in the webgui and try to understand the business rules you will almost have no success in CWS too. OT is notorious for not putting fully functioning use cases and a walk through,so whenever possible I write code assuming the user has not worked in Livelink for X number of years and try to educate you all. Livelink,Content Server,Enterprise Server all of this has been Livelink’s marketing brand name changes over the years.CS i sused in many of the integrations like AGA, XECM, RMLINK  and you know you are programming against livelink if you see a link that looks like this  http(s)://somefriendlyURL/livelink.exe|cs.exe|llisapi.dll|cs.dll|livelink.In many places SAP/ SP /Exchange will be configured to talk to Archive Server and then they will use Livelink to read into archive server and turn that into LL objects for better presentment/RM and other aspects. The AGA product is moving away from LAPI(not sure totally or not) to REST API in LL.

**********************************************END UPDATE****************************

 

In many instances I have been dumb founded by many things people get to do with livelink totally unheard of.Since the world has gone mobile and livelink’s own mobile solutions involving REST API are somehow limited people use creative ways to get around that.Many times they get stuck because OT examples once in C# and now days in java as well don’t give them complete working ,hand holding examples using the world’s most used SOAP generator using SOAP UI

Why it is so I don’t know but it could perhaps be drain on OT resources, to make money for OT ECO system consultants and OT professional services but in many cases a frustrated developer is not what OT wants. But wait a minute look at the support job that Web Reports / Active View offers.You post a thing and in two hrs you have answers even though some people not even doing their homework misuses.But what it has made is basically it has geared any new oncoming development to be done in its framework.  Successful software is only possible if there is a good educated programmers complementing the product.Enough said I use SOAPUI to test if the WSDL’s I deployed in an organizations web server works or not meaning see the WSDL on the browser is not enough you need to get a authentication token and do something in livelink to know if everything is working or not.So I use it to do small things and not any involved things.Some SAP/OT consultants have shown me a better SOAP tool that they use internally but I have forgotten its name.

Why this post?

People when they are in a bind do ask me or if I see something and  I have time I experiment.

Here’s an actual email thread that I am publishing so if some other poor soul is in the weeds it may sometime help that person.The email also contains some very simple workflow info which I feel most CWS programmers lack as they have not played really with livelink.Without further ado here it is names has been masked for ovbious reasons but everything else unedited.

 

 

Email qn to me

Hello Mr. Appu,  Looking for a little help. I was searching on the web for an issue with workflowservices for CS10.   I have an issue updating the formdata value using the UpdateWorkitemData using SOAP UI. It gives me the error “Form not Found”.  Although I have the code working in Java, fine.   Please let me know if you faced such similar issues. OT support wasn’t helpful either.   My code below   <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv=”http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/” xmlns:urn=”urn:api.ecm.opentext.com” xmlns:urn1=”urn:WorkflowService.service.livelink.opentext.com” xmlns:urn2=”urn:Core.service.livelink.opentext.com“>      <soapenv:Header>    REMOVED FOR CLARITY </soapenv:Envelope>   Regards,

My Reply

Do you have access to the KB ,if so see this post of how I helped a person with a SoapUI call https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/cs.dll?func=ll&objId=35766457&objAction=viewincontainer&ShowReplyEntry=35843158#forum_topic_35843158if not have a look at the response I posted http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1741405In any case I don’t do anything with SoapUI other than to test if the WSDL works and I can get authentication. If you are positive the java code gets you what you want observe the SOAP packet and reverse engineer it for SOAPUI SOAPUI does not support polymorphism that is the geek speak on this although I don’t really know what that all means. OT SAP people use another SOAP generator but I have forgotten its name. I saw it about 4 yrs back as part of their archive server offering which they said is superior to SOAPUI.   Now in case you don’t really know about WF /forms etc what I advise people is this Only the “Workflow Manager” user/group people can update things. You can find that by painting the map in the GUI and looking at who is in its “Management” group or simply see if you can click on status of the map and its shows you the executing things. At the minimum the workflow should contain a template of the form you can see that also by looking at the workflow status object   If you are sure the form object is there and you can update it within the GUI then CWS code should work so long as it is written according to what the WSDL expects You may be able to get a little more detail if you put debug=2,wantlapilogs=true, wantlogs=true in that livelink server which receives the request Always do the easiest first look at the workflow status object with the GUI.WF is one of the only things in livelink that as “SA” user like ‘Admin’ cannot see. only people in WF Mangers can see its internals.   Good luck.

Hi Reply Thanking me not many return any such thing so I was very happy.

Hi ,  Thanks a lot for your tip. I debugged the java code thru fiddler and found the XML  structure to be updated. I’m actually working with the SAP mobility project (outsourced to <name withdrawn>). They couldn’t use the  java or C# codes and needed REST API, which unfortunately is not available for workflow services.   Once again a humble thanks for your timely help.     Regards,   <name withdrawn>

 

 

 

 

 

Java Samples for Content Webservices

 
I LOST ALL CONTENT WHICH WAS STORED IN COMMUNITIES.OPENTEXT.COM.IF YOU ARE A STARTER READING THIS AND WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE ORIGINAL CONTENT DEPENDING ON TIME I HAVE I CAN SEND YOU SNIPPETS.LEAVE A COMMENT TO SUCH EFFECT.

Java Samples for Content Webservices are few and far in between.OT mainly puts samples in C# and many  a times I myself wonder if my company did not allow me to do that how I would do that in Java.In all truth OT ships a massive application called TreeView.java and TreeView.s ln for both languages .But the java thing takes a lot of setup especially if one was not keeping active in that world.However I used the NetBeansIDE to actually do most of that so I use that debugging environment to try all my java stuff Recently I debugged how to run a Live Report in livelink via C# webservices.Then somebody wanted me to show them how to do it via Java.One of these days I want to return to seeing if I can do all this command line with nothing else other than notepad.

Well I created two word documents, my guess is the poster did not speak english  very well,did not know livelink nor did know java to start with  .Hence I dumbed it enough for people to follow in almost any criteria.

 

Having livelink and its builder helps me in my endeavours and so Oscript remains my first love although I am getting farther and farther from it all

 

I have these files in the Communities website

If I had a LR taking a string parameter  how to write that in Java(C# is available aplenty)

If I had a LR taking a integer parameter how to write that in Java(C#is available aplenty)

There is a bug with Live Report Extensions.A poster in KB said that OT is aware of it.

Why Having LR Extensions(something that Webreports) company produces breaks Livereport calling with Webservices of OT

 

 

How to Parse a Node’s categories in C# WCF code

****************************************** ***START UPDATE 10/3/2016*****************

LAPI and its client installer has become very hard to find. Moreover clients written in LAPI  in say Java/.NET will only work if your Livelink a.k.a Content Server is of version less than CS16.Readers who are new to LL programming is encouraged to read this to the approach and not to the exact lines of the code.What I mean is when you used to program in LAPI you were basically passing parameters to discrete calls by modelling it based on the webgui of livelink .SOAP based webservices called CWS is also the same,so if you do not try to do the task in the webgui and try to understand the business rules you will almost have no success in CWS too. OT is notorious for not putting fully functioning use cases and a walk through,so whenever possible I write code assuming the user has not worked in Livelink for X number of years and try to educate you all. Livelink,Content Server,Enterprise Server all of this has been Livelink’s marketing brand name changes over the years.CS i sused in many of the integrations like AGA, XECM, RMLINK  and you know you are programming against livelink if you see a link that looks like this  http(s)://somefriendlyURL/livelink.exe|cs.exe|llisapi.dll|cs.dll|livelink.In many places SAP/ SP /Exchange will be configured to talk to Archive Server and then they will use Livelink to read into archive server and turn that into LL objects for better presentment/RM and other aspects. The AGA product is moving away from LAPI(not sure totally or not) to REST API in LL.

**********************************************END UPDATE****************************

Recently a programmer asked me how you would show the values in a nodes categories.He had done all except up to the fact that he did not know how to get the

real values hidden in Stringvalue, Integervalue, boolean etc.I don’t remember seeing a good example but C#’s good debugger helped me.Also quite a posts form people like Sean Walker,Rob Vanderpoel

helped me understand the structure although I like seeing simple full samples rather than snippets

After you get the AttributeGroups,you have to go into that and get the DisplayName and keys and based on the type you have to cast that value making sure to handle nulls as well

perhaps now I can write better set attributes because i was wondering how one would write a generic call with the examples in OT.

I was able to do this in about 1.5 hrs and learned something as well.The code was done in a hurry and based off Jason Smith’s starter examples

here’s a link in case somebody needs it

 

Or email exchange hiding the actual names etc

Hi Appu,

Thank you for this information, it is very similar to what the REMOVED NAME consultant has produced so far, however the part we are stuck with is getting from the “Key” value to the actual data shown in Livelink.

For example the output for the document you reference below looks something like:

Display Name: Title –- Its key is: 122343.9.24

We would like to see:

Display Name: Title –- Its value is: WEB SERVICES NEED BETTER EXAMPLES

Is this something that you have been able to accomplish? There doesn’t seem to be any calls to make the jump from Key to Value.

Thanks,