Read more about the eight reference architectures.
In the previous two examples we focused on moving content from the SharePoint document library in to the traditional ECM’s repository behind the scenes. That “publish to ECM” paradigm may work for you but you must consider that once the content has moved in to your traditional ECM system’s repository you will lose sight of it from within SharePoint.
In this third reference architecture a set of SharePoint web parts are created; these connect directly to the traditional ECM system and allow you to view that content from within the SharePoint environment. In a typical implementation, some parts of the SharePoint portal will be displaying native SharePoint content and other parts displaying ECM content. This is a fairly common approach to SharePoint/ECM unification today.
A user using this architecture can see content in a variety of systems from within a single web screen. As you can imagine, this is a very attractive proposition and can be an excellent solution in some cases. This is the classic client-level unification model where all of the unification process is delivered at the SharePoint portal framework level.
Where this architecture fails is in the area interoperability between systems. Although you are able to view content from disparate systems from a single interface there is no actual unification of content or processes. For example, you cannot drag an object from the web part that points to the ECM system and drop it in to the SharePoint web part.
The ECM content that you view does not have to have been published from SharePoint, it could be existing content managed by a different application. Equally, you could view other features of the ECM system: workflow tasks, inbox items, discussion threads, etc.
If you combine this reference architecture with the “Loosely Coupled Solution” architecture you do get the beginnings of a usable solution. You can publish a piece of content from SharePoint in to the ECM system and to the end user is simply moves from one web part to another.
Conclusion
This solution can be an extremely effective, efficient and low risk approach and should be considered a practical solution. It is especially useful to expose ECM functionality and content to "occasional users" who typically live in SharePoint - people who rarely use the ECM systems. However, it really comes in to its own when it is coupled with some of the other architectures. After looking at all eight of these architectures I will show how they can be combined in to real life solutions.
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