ccmEnterprise Suite

ccmEnterprise will be released in 2010.

Rationale

The ccmEnterprise Suite is designed to change the way business process applications are built, configured, and deployed. With its service-oriented architecture (SOA), .NET-based development environment, and extensive configuration capabilities, business process applications can be developed and deployed more quickly and reliably than ever before. ccmEnterprise, ccmEForms, and ccmExhange are the three applications that make up the ccmEnterprise Suite.

Design

The future of Internet communications is not predictable and the technologies used today will evolve or be replaced. The ccmEnterprise Suite must be flexible enough to process "plain" XML data that is not wrapped in a SOAP envelope and also be able to be extended to support specific XML formats, such as ATOM and even non-XML formats, such as JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). This flexibility ensures that code written today will be valid in the future, even if protocols change or are replaced.

The system architecture will:

  • Standardize protocols for application-to-application communication.
  • Enable communication security.
  • Allow distributed transaction coordination.
  • Provide a zero-install web version of the ccmMercury 5.x branch.
  • Provide a migration path from ccmMercury 5.x desktop client to the next generation of ccmEnterprise client products.
  • Provide a single-service abstraction across all operating environments, and network topologies.
  • Support an interface definition format and associated messaging model (WSDL and SOAP).
  • Support both stateful and stateless messaging transactions and services.
  • Provide Quality-of-Service capabilities.
  • Ensure message delivery with fault tolerant services.

ccmEnterprise

The ccmEnterprise service includes the core services found in ccmMercury v5.3. Using the .NET 3.5 framework, the service was developed with third-party communication in mind. The redesigned user interface is available as a desktop application or with a third-party web browser. Custom applications (external service clients) may be designed to communicate with ccmEnterprise. The ccmEnterprise service includes:

  • User Authentication Service that supports LDAP, Active Directory, ADAM, or ccmEnterprise;
  • Event Scheduling Service, a CRON like job scheduler;
  • SMTP messaging support;
  • Templates and Reports Service, for asynchronous report generation;
  • Repository Service that supports DM, SharePoint, Live Link, IBM FileNet P8, and ccmEnterprise repositories;
  • Support for Oracle, and Microsoft SQL databases;
  • 64-bit operating system support;

ccmEForms

The ccmEForms service is a data collection service which enables users without ccmEnterprise accounts to submit data into a ccmEnterprise application. HTML or PDF forms are presented to the user by your web server. Once the user's information is completed it is sent to the ccmEForms service for authentication and validation. From here the ccmEnterprise Suite of applications ensures your users' information is recorded in a ccmEnterprise application. This information is fault tolerant and sent securely. With the use of ccmExchange, user information may be collected from a DMZ or an external organization.

ccmExchange

The ccmExchange product is a connectivity service that enables the automatic exchange of secure encrypted information (records) between clients using ccmMercury v4, ccmMercury v5, and/or ccmEnterprise applications for electronic management of business processes.

Compatible with both Desktop and Browser clients, ccmExchange offers connectivity between multiple portfolio organizations through a common messaging language which mediates all communications and interactions between services, provides fault tolerance, error, and exception handling, ensuring the integrity of your data. This means no duplication of effort in re-entering data, no data entry errors, and no delays.

The architecture of ccmExchange is centered on the concept of a bus. The bus provides message delivery services based on standards such as SOAP, HTTP, and Java Messaging Service (JMS). It is designed for high-throughput, guaranteed message delivery to a variety of service producers and consumers. The bus enables the use of multiple protocols (such as synchronous and asynchronous) and performs transformation and routing of service requests. The bus enables services to interact with each other based on the quality of service requirements of the individual transactions. It also supports different standards such as SOAP, XML, WSDL, JMS, J2EE, JAX-RPC, and WCF.