IBM Workplace Forms: Guide to Building and Integrating a Sample Workplace Forms Application

Chapter 8. Integration with IBM DB2 Content Manager 251

8.1 Overview

Workplace Forms can be stored in Content Manager as items with specific attribute arrays

that in turn can be used to store metadata describing the form. Content Manager can serve

as a central repository with different purposes and functionalities in regard to eForms:

򐂰 Document management

򐂰 Workflow modelling and processing

򐂰 Data search and retrieval

򐂰 Archive and storage

Figure 8-1 gives you a functional overview of the three tiers involved when integrating DB2

Content Manager.

Figure 8-1 3-Tier overview of DB2 Content Manager integration

252 IBM Workplace Forms: Guide to Building and Integrating a Sample Workplace Forms Application

The interaction of Workplace Forms with DB2 Content Manager usually follows a specific

sequence of steps, as shown in Figure 7-2.

Figure 8-2 Typical sequence of steps for Workplace Forms and CM interaction

The described CM connector is in fact a custom servlet that performs the interaction with the

DB2 CM instance. In the following section we used a sample implementation of a CM

Submission servlet that is part of the IBM DB2 Content Manager Demo platform. However,

the basic concept and functionality of the servlet described here is applicable to any type of

Web application that performs this integration.

The described CM connector is in fact a custom servlet that performs the interaction with the

DB2 CM instance. In the following section, we have used a sample implementation of a CM

Submission servlet that is part of the IBM DB2 Content Manager Demo platform. However,

the basic concept and functionality of the servlet described here is applicable to any type of

Web application that performs this integration.