CMIS is just a bad PR exercise

So there is a new specification which is supposed to make a developer's life easier.

Yeah right!

Unfortunately there is nothing useful in it. The specification is developed on a very high level and there is simply no benefit for the developers on the ground who have to actually use it. Well of course it is not supposed to be like that and there are attempts at something technical that is just silly.

The smallest base type in the spec is 'Document'. Yep. So everything we deal with everyday which we call 'Content', that being the _content_ of Documents is completely discarded in the so called, ha, ha, ha, 'Content' Management Interoperability Service. Unless off course you are OK with changing all your fields, nodes, components, etc, etc to extend the base class 'Document'.

It seems to me that a bit of that eighties geeky need to deal with emotional insecurities by clouding up one's language with ambiguities may have survived in the legacy part of our machine. And they are going to fight to the bitter end to make it stand. Even in 2010 with freaking SQL and all. I s#*7 you not. And even going as far as leaving Web Content Management out of scope. How old are the grandfathers who are doing this to us?

Can they seriously omit Content from the 'Content' Management? Are they intentionally trying to dissuade anyone from taking it seriously?

It is very sobering to realise that OASIS in fact just supports 'standards' because they are paid to, regardless of the poor quality.

Perhaps I fail completely in articulating our needs via their channel for public feedback on the spec causing myself and them unnecessary frustration and emotional grief. Please have a look at the spec and submit some honest feedback. Who knows maybe someone somewhere actually do care.

After reading the spec you may have a good laugh at these blatant lies:

OASIS announced the approval of Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) version 1.0, a new open standard that enables information to be shared across Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories from different vendors. Advanced via a collaboration of major ECM solution providers worldwide, CMIS is now an official OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. Using Web services and Web 2.0 interfaces, CMIS dramatically reduces the IT burden around multi-vendor, multi-repository content management environments. Companies no longer need to maintain custom code and one-off integrations in order to share information across their various ECM systems. CMIS also enables independent software vendors (ISVs) to create specialized applications that are capable of running over a variety of content management systems. David Choy of EMC, chair of the OASIS CMIS Technical Committee: 'CMIS makes it possible for business units to deploy systems independently and focus on application needs rather than on infrastructure considerations. With CMIS, integrating content between two or more repositories is faster, simpler and more cost-effective. This is how it should be.' [...] Mary Laplante, vice president and senior analyst for the Gilbane Group: 'CMIS has the potential to be a game-changing standard, not only through its promise to facilitate affordable content management, but also as an enabler of whole new classes of high-value, information-rich applications that have not been feasible to date. At the end of the day, companies simply need better approaches to integrating systems. Business agility increasingly separates the winners from the losers, and agility is perhaps the biggest single benefit that CMIS offers'. CMIS is offered for implementation on a royalty-free basis..."

But ranting is not getting us any further so we should simply agree on some standards among each other and find vendors who value their integrity to support it.