Lets look at profiles!!

Title might be misleading :) We are looking into profiles features in Oracle UCM.
My view is that all successful software products owe a lot of their success to their marketing teams :) .
UCM is weak on there doc management capabilities, here is why?. When it comes to Content types usually guys in the market have stuck to some thing in line with OO concepts, we create a Content Type X and assign a list of attributes to it, during check in users select a type assign certain attributes and check in. Later customization is around content types and attributes.
UCM has a different approach to this. We simply create content types in on place with out assigning any metadata to it. We create the list of metadata or information fields in an other place. There is no strong relation ship between content type and metadata. When a user wants to check in a content item he will see the complete list of metadata fields. This is not desirable in a pure doc management scenario where each department has a set of metadata fields the summation would be a list which would require users to scroll down. Scrolling down and finding the right field to enter can be a pain when you doing it day in and out. Also a field that is mandatory for one content type may not make sense to the other if that field is filled.
This is where profiles come to the rescue. Though this feature was added late into the product sufficient reasoning has gone during development. They allow you to create highly customized department specific check in and search screens. Using this check in and search can be done more efficiently.
In my next blog I will put up small primer on how to use this feature.