I ran across Customizing and Extending IBM Content Navigator today.
Abstract:
IBM® Content Navigator is a ready-to-use, modern, standards-based user interface that supports Enterprise Content Management (ECM) use cases, including collaborative document management, production imaging, and report management. It is also a flexible and powerful user platform for building custom ECM applications using open web-based standards.
This IBM Redbooks® publication has an overview of the functions and features that IBM Content Navigator offers, and describes how you can configure and customize the user interface with the administration tools that are provided. This book also describes the extension points and customization options of IBM Content Navigator and how you can customize and extend it with sample code. Specifically, the book shows you how to set up a development environment, and develop plug-ins that add new actions and provide special production imaging layout to the user interface. Other customization topics include working with external data services, using IBM Content Navigator widgets externally in other applications, and wrapping the widgets as iWidgets to be used in other applications. In addition, this book describes how to reuse IBM Content Navigator components in mobile development, and how to work with existing viewer or incorporate third-party viewer into IBM Content Navigator.
This book is intended for IT architects, and application designers and developers. It offers both a high-level description of how to extend and customize IBM Content Navigator and also more technical details of how to do implementation with sample code.
IBM Content Navigator has all the hooks and features you expect in a content navigation system.
Except for explicit subject identity and merging out of the box. Like you would have with a topic map based solution.
Skimming through the table of contents, it occurred to me that IBM has done most of the work necessary for a topic map based content management system.
Subject identity and merging doctrines are domain specific so entirely appropriate to handle as extensions to the IBM Content Navigator.
Think about it. Given IBM’s marketing budget and name recognition, is saying:
“IBM® Compatible” on the outside of your product a bad thing?.