By Suhas Das
Author
In OpenText Documentum, organizations often need to integrate external data sources with their content repository. Documentum provides a powerful mechanism to access third-party data directly using registered tables, enabling seamless integration without duplicating data.
What is Third-Party Data in Documentum?
Third-party data refers to data stored outside the Documentum repository, typically in external database tables.
Instead of importing this data into the docbase, Documentum allows you to:
- Access external tables directly
- Query them alongside repository objects
- Treat them as part of the Documentum environment
What are Registered Tables?
A registered table is a way to make an external database table accessible within Documentum.
Once registered:
- The table behaves like a Documentum object
- It can be queried using DQL (Document Query Language)
- No physical data is copied into the repository
This approach improves performance and avoids redundancy.
How to Register an External Table
To register an external table, Documentum provides a DQL command:
REGISTER TABLE dm_dbo.table_name (column_name datatype)
What happens after registration:
-
Documentum creates an object of type
dm_registered - The external table becomes accessible through DQL
- You can query it just like internal repository objects
Example Use Case
Suppose you have:
- Customer data in an external database
- Documents in Documentum
You can:
- Register the customer table
- Join it with Documentum objects using DQL
- Retrieve documents along with customer details
This enables powerful integrations such as:
- Linking documents to business data
- Enhancing search results with external attributes
- Building unified views across systems
Key Advantages
- No data duplication → External data remains in its original source
- Real-time access → Always fetches current data
- Unified querying → Use DQL across internal and external data
- Flexibility → Easily integrate with enterprise systems
Conclusion
Documentum’s registered table feature allows organizations to leverage third-party data efficiently by integrating external database tables directly into the repository environment.
By using DQL and dm_registered objects, developers can build powerful, data-driven applications without moving or duplicating data.