Available Document Management System solutions

PPM version 9.50 offers the following DMS solutions:

• PPM Database DMS: Introduced into PPM since version 9.13. From PPM users' perspective, this solution provides all the features of a Documentum-based DMS solution, as well as a new feature to search only the latest versions of documents or to search all versions. This solution allows you to store all the documents and associated metadata in your PPM database, and provides documents check-in, check-out, and versioning functionalities out-of-the-box. It requires no additional software or hardware products, no additional deployment or configuration. It involves no extra license cost.

• PPM External Database DMS: Provides the same features as the PPM Center Database DMS solution, except that the documents are saved in an external database schema, instead of in the PPM Center database schema.

• PPM Center File System: The default DMS solution you have in a fresh install of PPM Center. The File System DMS solution only offers "attachment-like" behavior, and offers none of the features expected from a Document Management System.

The following table summarizes functional differences among different DMS solutions.

Functional comparison of DMS features

DMS Feature	File System	PPM Database DMS or PPM External Database DMS
Versioning	—	Yes
Check in/Check out	—	Yes
Check out override	—	Yes
Full Text Search	—	Yes (after enabling full-text search)
Key Words	—	Yes
Tip only / History Search	—	Yes (after enabling full-text search)

UI Changes

There is almost no difference for a PPM User when using Documentum or PPM Database DMS (or PPM External Database DMS). The only difference is that when full-text search is enabled in PPM Database DMS or PPM External Database DMS, the search pages display an option to "Search Historical Versions".

Search Operators

The documents keywords search operators you can use are different between Documentum and PPM Database DMS (or PPM External Database DMS). The search syntax is described on the Search Help page. Click to open the Search Help page.

The following table summarizes the differences of search operators between Documentum-based DMS solutions and database-based DMS solutions.

Differences of Search Operators

Operators	PPM Database DMS, or PPM External Database DMS	Documentum
"AND" queries	You should insert the word and (case-insensitive) or & character between the search words.	By default, each query is an AND query. Since this is the default search behavior, there is no need to include the word and between search keywords.
Phrase search	By default, each query is a "Phrase" query.	You can also search for documents containing a specific phrase, or set of words in a specific order. Enclose the words in double quotes to enable this type of query. All words enclosed in double quotes must occur together and in the specified order for a document to be considered as a match.
Exclusion of words	To specifically exclude documents that contain a particular word, preface the keyword with a NOT (~) sign.	To specifically exclude documents that contain a particular word, preface the keyword by a minus (-) sign. In this case, all documents that contain the specified word are excluded from the results, even if they match other keywords in your query.
"OR" queries	You can insert the word or (case-insensitive) or | character between the search words.	If you want to search for documents containing one OR another keyword, you can insert the word or between the search words.
Combination search	You may perform combination searches for documents by combining AND, OR, and ~ queries. If you want to search for documents containing both AND and OR queries, make sure to wrap sub-queries with parentheses "(" and ")".	Any of these search formats can be used in combination. OR queries take precedence over AND queries.
Search historical versions	The Search Historical Versions option allows you to search content and/or version comments of historical versions of documents in addition to full search (including document content and document properties) of their current version.	Not supported.
Synonyms	Not supported.	To expand your search to include keywords that have a similar meaning as a word you have specified, preface your keyword with a tilde (~). In this case, a document is considered as a match if it contains the search keyword you specified, or additional words that have a similar meaning.