How To: Connecting SharePoint (MOSS) to a CMIS Repository

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Feb 17, 2009

SharePoint MOSS Web Content Management and CMIS Integration Microsoft has played a major role in the development of the Content Management Interoperability Specification (CMIS) that is currently in the hands of the OASIS working group. Committed as the team has been, they (including Microsoft) have not provided much information or examples of how CMIS will work with Microsoft's SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). Until now.

A new MSDN article has arrived that demonstrates how one can integrate an external document repository with MOSS (or the free version of SharePoint, WSS) — which is exactly what the CMIS spec is all about. Our interest piqued, we took a look and in the following article, we share what we found.

Microsoft definitely likes to be in the thick of things. With the most popular business collaboration tool around it's no surprise they are deep in the process of developing a content interoperability specification.

With so many organizations having some kind of SharePoint implementation, both business people and developers alike having been anxiously waiting for some kind of word on how SharePoint could implement CMIS.

Microsoft has now provided an example. It doesn't cover the full CMIS specification, but there's enough to give you a good idea of how it could work.

But before we get into the nuts and bolts of the example, let's take a step back and review some background.

A Quick Overview of MOSS and WSS

Now we are sure you know about SharePoint. SharePoint or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) is Microsoft's version of an Enterprise Content Management platform. It offers document management, web content management, collaboration, search and business intelligence in one neat little package, designed for the small to medium sized business.

MOSS is built upon Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). This is the core framework that comes free with any Microsoft Windows Server. WSS provides document management, collaboration, a centralized shared document repository, the core service of SharePoint Lists and a few other features.

SharePoint is currently the most deployed content management solution in enterprise today. With well over US$ 1 billion in licenses sold, you know that any content management standard needs to work with this solution.

To learn more about MOSS, read our SharePoint 2007 Review - Six Pillars of MOSS.

What is CMIS? (briefly)

For those of you living in a dark room with no connection to the real world (internet world that is), CMIS stands for Content Management Interoperability Specification. It is a proposed new content management standard aimed particularly at document management and all the good stuff that goes with it (like metadata).

The standard was brought to life by Microsoft, IBM, EMC, Oracle, Alfresco and Open Text. The purpose of the standard? To provide a simple web services interface that would enable developers to write applications that can talk to more than one content repository without having to know the specific details of each repository.

The specification uses a least common denominator approach. Which means that only a basic set of operations for talking to a content repository are included. It defines bindings using two protocols: SOAP and REST/Atom.

Work on the CMIS standard is currently in the hands of an OASIS working group. The first official face-to-face of the OASIS technical committee occurred at the end of January and things sounded pretty positive. A public review is expected sometime late spring.

For more detailed info on CMIS, see the following: