Content Management and Capture

Hi,

in Filenet, is there a way to find out where the content of a document is located within a storage area of type filesystem?

It is my understanding that the document's path is somehow obfuscated but it's not yet clear to me if this is unachievable by design or there are ways around it.

Many thanks in advance.

Kind regards.

------------------------------
Jesus Calderin
------------------------------

Hi Jesus, you cannot get the path via the database other than identify the storage area root directory.  If you wanted to work real hard you could scan the file system and gather all the file names which include the object_id (guid) in the name and load to your own database, then parse that for each document ID you have. FileNet document objects have a list (collection) property for content so you could have zero, one or many content elements. You could also have multiple storage locations - mediums for each version of a document worm, cloud blob, db blob. Using the API is exceptionally easy you do not have to go direct to the file system. 

Hi,

in Filenet, is there a way to find out where the content of a document is located within a storage area of type filesystem?

It is my understanding that the document's path is somehow obfuscated but it's not yet clear to me if this is unachievable by design or there are ways around it.

Many thanks in advance.

Kind regards.

------------------------------
Jesus Calderin
------------------------------

Hi Jay, thanks for your response,

yes, we have used the API for other purposes and found it easy but (although I didn't specify it for the sake of brevity) our goal is actually to study how to recover a document deleted by mistake, or at least its contents.

Our first approach has been to enable audit for the deletion event and use the ID to search for the file in a filesystem backup, but this will only work for low-volume scenarios, it would be unfeasible in our current production env. without the complete path.

Knowing that this limitation is inherent to Filenet will help us in our study, though, so thanks a lot again.

Regards.

Jesus Garcia.

Hi Jesus, you cannot get the path via the database other than identify the storage area root directory.  If you wanted to work real hard you could scan the file system and gather all the file names which include the object_id (guid) in the name and load to your own database, then parse that for each document ID you have. FileNet document objects have a list (collection) property for content so you could have zero, one or many content elements. You could also have multiple storage locations - mediums for each version of a document worm, cloud blob, db blob. Using the API is exceptionally easy you do not have to go direct to the file system. 

Hi,

in Filenet, is there a way to find out where the content of a document is located within a storage area of type filesystem?

It is my understanding that the document's path is somehow obfuscated but it's not yet clear to me if this is unachievable by design or there are ways around it.

Many thanks in advance.

Kind regards.

------------------------------
Jesus Calderin
------------------------------

Hi Jay, thanks for your response,

yes, we have used the API for other purposes and found it easy but (although I didn't specify it for the sake of brevity) our goal is actually to study how to recover a document deleted by mistake, or at least its contents.

Our first approach has been to enable audit for the deletion event and use the ID to search for the file in a filesystem backup, but this will only work for low-volume scenarios, it would be unfeasible in our current production env. without the complete path.

Knowing that this limitation is inherent to Filenet will help us in our study, though, so thanks a lot again.

Regards.

Jesus Garcia.

Hi Jesus, you cannot get the path via the database other than identify the storage area root directory.  If you wanted to work real hard you could scan the file system and gather all the file names which include the object_id (guid) in the name and load to your own database, then parse that for each document ID you have. FileNet document objects have a list (collection) property for content so you could have zero, one or many content elements. You could also have multiple storage locations - mediums for each version of a document worm, cloud blob, db blob. Using the API is exceptionally easy you do not have to go direct to the file system. 

Hi,

in Filenet, is there a way to find out where the content of a document is located within a storage area of type filesystem?

It is my understanding that the document's path is somehow obfuscated but it's not yet clear to me if this is unachievable by design or there are ways around it.

Many thanks in advance.

Kind regards.

------------------------------
Jesus Calderin
------------------------------

Hi Jay, thanks for your response,

yes, we have used the API for other purposes and found it easy but (although I didn't specify it for the sake of brevity) our goal is actually to study how to recover a document deleted by mistake, or at least its contents.

Our first approach has been to enable audit for the deletion event and use the ID to search for the file in a filesystem backup, but this will only work for low-volume scenarios, it would be unfeasible in our current production env. without the complete path.

Knowing that this limitation is inherent to Filenet will help us in our study, though, so thanks a lot again.

Regards.

Jesus Garcia.

Hi Jesus, you cannot get the path via the database other than identify the storage area root directory.  If you wanted to work real hard you could scan the file system and gather all the file names which include the object_id (guid) in the name and load to your own database, then parse that for each document ID you have. FileNet document objects have a list (collection) property for content so you could have zero, one or many content elements. You could also have multiple storage locations - mediums for each version of a document worm, cloud blob, db blob. Using the API is exceptionally easy you do not have to go direct to the file system. 

Hi,

in Filenet, is there a way to find out where the content of a document is located within a storage area of type filesystem?

It is my understanding that the document's path is somehow obfuscated but it's not yet clear to me if this is unachievable by design or there are ways around it.

Many thanks in advance.

Kind regards.

------------------------------
Jesus Calderin
------------------------------