Drawbacks of IBM Workplace Web Content Management (WWCM) Version 6.x

This article is to highlight not so good features of IBM Workplace Web Content Management (WWCM). This article will provide architects/designers with information which will help them to judge if IBM WWCM is the right fit for the requirements.

Drawbacks of IBM WWCM 6.x

Based on my experience in IBM WWCM usage and comparing with basic WCM features, here is a list of features which are lacking in IBM WWCM:

• Tight integration with WebSphere Portal Server
• IBM WWCM requires base installation of Portal Server as it inherits Portal functionalities to work. For Example: Security model etc.
• Versioning:
• No control of number of versions to be maintained at content type level. It’s all or none
• No control over which content type needs versioning and which not. Its either all or none
• No versioning at component (Image, Menu, Navigator etc.) level.
• Syndication/ Content Publish:
• All the syndicators will be either scheduled or none of them. You cannot choose few syndicators to be automated while leaving others as manual process
• Once the content becomes live/published it is moved across from one to other environment. There is no way to control approval of the content for specific publisher/syndicator as with other products
• Tough to debug the cause of failure of syndicator
• If there are some failed items with syndicator, it is tough to determine which content items failed
• Lack of customization
• Syndication/Publish history view is not available
• WCM Portlets
• Out of the Box WCM authoring and rendering portlets are legacy IBM portlets and are not JSR standards
• Customization is painful as it uses IBM specific code and it is not exposed.
• Customizations are
• Tough as they are IBM legacy portlets
• Limited set of API and taglibs available which prevents customization
• Rendition Services
• No rendition service available out of the box
• Workflows
• Basic workflows can be defined
• Parallel workflows I do not think are possible
• Workflows available only for Authoring templates but not for components
• Granular level privileges not possible to implement Example: Controlling function privileges at each stage
• No funda of voting and group approvals and rejects
• Caching
• No Database caching
• If using JSP components for a functionality through Presentation Templates, there is no Out of the Box caching available
• Rich Text Editor
• Out of the Box RTE adds unnecessary HTML tags while creating content. Example: Adding <p> tags
• Out of the Box RTE doesn’t provide features like copy from word which is quite common these days
• Context upload and Extract
• No Out of the Box facility to import content to WWCM. We need to write a custom module to upload
• No Out of the Box facility to export content in readable format. Example: XML
• Reporting:
• Custom build is needed for any reporting. Example: Content extract between dates to a specified format, Content changes between two dates, content status between two servers etc.
• Secured binaries (like images, documents etc. ) are stored in database than file system
• No basic Web Services available for Content Services