What's new in IBM Content Manager Enterprise Edition V8.6

IBM Content Manager Enterprise Edition V8.6 introduces the following new features.

Tip: Many of the following features are at least partially supported in mixed software version configurations. For details, see the "Compatibility" section in the IBM Content Manager V8.6.0 Release Notes.

Administration of IBM Content Manager using IBM Content Navigator

You can now use a plug-in in IBM Content Navigator that enables you to administer IBM Content Manager.

IBM Content Navigator supports the following IBM Content Manager tasks:

  • Authenticating and authorizing users
  • Data modeling
  • Importing LDAP users.
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Cloud storage capability

You can use IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS) or Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for your resource manager storage volume. Cloud storage is useful for long-term storage of objects on devices other than the fixed disks that are attached to the resource manager. Learn more...

Case-insensitive searching and sorting

Searching for data and sorting data can now be configured to be case-insensitive. (In earlier versions, these activities were always case-sensitive.) You can configure whether each attribute in an item type is case-sensitive or case-insensitive in the attribute's settings. This means that you no longer have to use functions such as "UPPER()" to make searches case-insensitive.

Note: This change means that queries that were used in earlier versions might give different results in the new version. (This does not affect text search, which has always been case-insensitive.)

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API simplification

The full set of Java APIs (connectors) needed for IBM Content Manager is now in a single .jar file that is called cmbicmsdk81.jar. This is the same .jar file that is in the OEM tool kit; it now also includes the utilities that were in cmbutil81.jar and cmbutilicm81.jar. The new cmbicmsdk81.jar file replaces all of the other connector .jar files that were in previous versions.

The com.ibm.mm.sdk.client and com.ibm.mm.sdk.cs packages have been removed from the API. (They were used to support RMI; however, RMI was never supported by IBM Content Manager.)

Minimum Java version is now Java 8

All the Java components in IBM Content Manager V8.6 now use Java 8. This means that:

  • To run any application that uses the Content Manager APIs or other components, you need Java 8 or higher.
  • Components which run under WebSphere Application Server, such as the web services, must be deployed into a version of WebSphere that runs Java 8 or higher.

Other new features

  • Data modeling item type improvements:
    • Added event subscriptions
    • Added log configuration to the Tool menu.
  • Usability improvements when listing privileges in privilege groups. It now shows if a subset of the privilege group is chosen in an ACL.
  • Support for Oracle 12c Release 2, including container databases (CDB). For more information, see Support for Oracle 12cR2 in Content Manager Enterprise Edition V8.6 and Using an Oracle multitenant container database (CDB).
  • Resource manager EE support for GFS2 and ext4 file systems on Linux.
  • WebSphere Liberty profile support for SSO with Content Manager Java connector. (This requires WebSphere Liberty APAR PI80932.)
  • The Content Manager API now requires ojdbc8.jar to connect to Oracle servers. If ojdbc8.jar is not installed with your version of Oracle, you can download it from the Oracle website. Make sure that the ORACLE_HOME environment variable has been set so that cmbenv81.bat/sh can find ojdbc8.jar under this directory:

    Windows: %ORACLE_HOME%\jdbc\lib

    UNIX: $ORACLE_HOME/jdbc/lib

  • The event monitor can now automatically recover if it loses the database connection to the library server. This means that the administrator no longer has to reset the flag in the system administration client, and then manually rerun the event monitor. In addition, if the primary event monitor stops, a new event monitor can automatically take over after a timeout interval; it does not require a manual reset in the system administration client.

Dropped and deprecated features

Content Manager Enterprise Edition V8.6 dropped the following features:

  • VideoCharger and Media Archive
  • Case Manager support
  • Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) data sources in the Content Manager Enterprise Edition V8 connector
  • VI Connector and IP Connector
  • C++ Connector
  • API cs and client packages. You should now use the server package instead.
  • Support for Solaris
  • BPM integration support
  • Support for Client for Windows with V8.6 servers
  • MS Technology document engine and annotation engine
Learn more...

No features have been deprecated in this version.