Real Story Group. Make Better Technology Decisions.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe

Adding structure to DAM and ECM

27-Aug-2009

Tags: Digital and Media Asset Management, Document Management (ECM)

"Unstructured Data" is the fancy term we use to refer to "Content." Historically we've employed this term to differentiate "structured" data (sitting in neat rows and columns in a database) from complex files that typically need attached metadata for essential context. Microsoft Office Files, CAD drawings and Video files are all examples of unstructured data.

But like much in our world of content technology, it can be a misleading term, since the way we use it only addresses one aspect of the "unstructured" nature of this information.  First of all, with the rise of XML (and previously SGML) there is such a thing as "structured content," and it's increasingly important, though not what I want to talk about today.

Today I want to talk about containers. In the structured data world the container for the data (the database) is itself a structured container, a container that is based upon and makes full use of a clearly defined data model. It simply cannot work without it.

In our world of content management, we also have the potential to have structured containers ("repositories" as we like to call them), yet time and again enterprises give little thought to how to structure that container. Instead, unstructured data gets dumped into an unstructured container.

Hence it is very common for us at CMS Watch to visit with clients who tell us all about the problems they have with their ECM or DAM system - only for us to then discover that virtually no planning went into how to structure the container (let alone the data) in the first place. There is no taxonomy or file plan, there is scant use of document types, metadata fields are seldom completed and seldom thought-through in the first place.  And there is almost never any kind of retention or lifecycle management of any kind in place. ECM & DAM systems are containers for managing unstructured data, but without any structure to that container you are up a creek without a paddle.

ECM & DAM systems are on the one hand nightmarishly complex to select, design, provision, and optimize. But so too are data-warehouses.  Yet, the typical enterprise would never think of deploying a data-warehouse without undertaking real effort to design and test the data models and schemas.

We shouldn't assume ECM or DAM systems will require any less work; in some cases they may require more. The term unstructured data is not an excuse, it is a statement. Unstructured data in the form of Office files, CAD drawings, or Video files can be managed well, and at a highly granular level. But unstructured data in unstructured containers is no more or less than a mess, and an expensive one at that.