Exception-based Error Reporting for DM API Helpers

As mentioned before, DM API calls are old-styled HRESULT functions, which return 0 (S_OK), to indicate the successful execution, or an error code. On the other hand, .NET developers commonly expect handling an exception, if something has gone wrong, not an error code.

Managed Helper Classes (Library) for eDOCS DM API

OpenText (Hummingbird) eDOCS DM API is ActiveX-based. It looks like it's been written decades ago and it's quite "low-levelish". Error reporting is based on return codes and not on exceptions. And it's syntax is VB6-like that is common for ActiveX components.

Custom Programming for eDOCS DM

The most common requests which I hear from the users of eDOCS DM are:

• extract documents from the document library and 
• upload documents from a disk to the library. 

Occasionally a user asks: "We've got documents from one of our offices, which are to be uploaded to DM. Maintain the folder structure, use profile form 'A', set the profile fields like this, and apply security settings like that."

This is a good example where you want to write some code to get the job done in one (well, may be more) clicks. This particular task - uploading the documents - is best to be solved using eDOCS DM API.
Other approaches exist as well, but I decided to use DM API for the following reasons:

• This is my first project of custom coding for eDOCS DM, so, for getting up to speed, I'll need some code samples, documentation and all tools ready.
• I'm going to use managed DM API Interop assemblies and write in C# and in VS2012.
• DM API is already installed as a part of DM Extensions.
• I also have Visual Studio 2012 already installed.
• I have DM Documentation from the eDOCS DM installation disk - eDOCS DM 5.3.1 DM API Reference Guide.pdf
• The last, but not the least, I have the source code of 2 tools written in VB.NET and C#, which I inherited from a guy, who was with the company before I joined and had left soon after :( Thank you, Jory, your code has helped me to start quickly!

Update

I've posted another article on different approaches to custom coding for DM which you may find useful:

Pros And Cons of Different Ways to Custom Programming for eDOCS DM

Opening OpenText eDOCS DM Series

It's been 4 months since I was assigned to support a document management system of a large enterprise. That system is a complex environment built on Hummingbird / OpenText eDOCS DM. My duty was (and still is) to stabilize the environment, make it more reliable. During the past 4 months I built some interesting tools to automate system monitoring, import and export documents, gather data for performance tuning, etc. Unlike Microsoft solutions, information about programming interfaces for OpenText products is difficult to find. I'll post my findings here and hope that someone will find this information helpful.

About Soft Inclinations

I'm starting this blog to write about Software: design, development, troubleshooting, etc., which I'd collectively call my "Inclinations", why not?