Advantages and Disadvantages Between CIS, RIDC, SOAP, and WSDLs

by | Jun 1, 2010 | Grab Bag

Someone asked about RIDC vs. CIS on the intradoc_users forum and I remembered my Oracle Support article that nicely outlines the main integration points with UCM.  This is a direct copy paste for people who may not have a support login.

Content Server Integration Suite – CIS – Proprietary Java API for Communicating with Content Server

Advantages:

Abstracted from Content Server (faster to use for experienced Java Developers who have less Content Server experience)

  1. Built-in Configurable Caching
  2. Highly scalable
  3. Provides easy method for federating requests to multiple Content Servers at once (single request is built and sent to multiple content servers)
  4. Very verbose configurable logging at the application level, and communication with Content Server
  5. Supports connecting via web server (authentication required for every request) or directly to Content Server socket (trusted connection)

Disadvantages:

  1. Large and highly abstracted; can be difficult for beginners to learn
  2. Not lightweight; uses more system resources for enterprise applications
  3. Only available for Java applications

RIDC – Proprietary Thin-Client API for Communicating with Content Server

Advantages:

  1. Easy to learn for those with extensive Content Server experience (very little abstraction from Content Server)
  2. With proper development, can be highly scalable, but requires more attention to detail
  3. Very lighweight; uses less system resources than CIS for enterprise applications
  4. Supports connecting via web server (authentication required for every request) or directly to Content Server socket (trusted connection)

Disadvantages:

  1. No configurable caching; all caching must be coded into application
  2. No built-in application logging; all logging must be coded into application
  3. Requires extensive Content Server architecture knowledge
  4. Only available for Java applications

SOAP – Standardized XML-based Messaging Protocol

Advantages:

  1. Well-known standard protocol
  2. Available for any language that supports SOAP (C#, VB.NET, ASP, Java, PHP, Javascript, Python, many more)

Disadvantages:

  1. No configurable caching; all caching must be coded into application
  2. No built-in application logging; all logging must be coded into application
  3. Requires extensive Content Server architecture knowledge
  4. Requires more overhead than other integration methods (i.e. possible performance issues without caching)
  5. Must be familiar with building the SOAP requests and parsing the SOAP responses
  6. Only supports connecting via the web server (authentication required for every request)

WSDL – Content Server Implementation of Standardized WDSL

Advantages:

  1. Well-known protocol (SOAP-based)
  2. SOAP tool kits available available for many languages (automatically generate the source code necessary for integration)
  3. Not necessary to extensively learn the Content Server architecture
  4. Not necessary to be familiar with building SOAP requests or parsing the responses

Disadvantages:

  1. No configurable caching; all caching must be coded into application
  2. No built-in application logging; all logging must be coded into application
  3. Requires more overhead than other integration methods (i.e. possible performance issues without caching)
  4. Only supports connecting via the web server (authentication required for every request)