Documentum provides framework for applying business logic and is termed as Business Objects Framework. Documentum provides a clear separation of business logic from the core content services so that the business logic can be executed irrespective of client accessing the repository. Using BOF, business logic can be changed without effecting the UI code.
Business objects encapsulates business logic in hot deployable package that is stored in the repository. This package will be deployed to the client application on demand. Business objects are used to extend the functionality of Documentum. We may need to validate the document before saving into the repository. To achieve this we can override the default behaviour of save event of document to execute the custom validation before save event was fired on that object. Code for the custom logic must be deployed to the repository and this code will be stored in the System cabinet. There are 3 types of business objects available in this framework. We will look into each type in detail
TBO stands for Type Based Objects. These are the most common types of business objects. These are used to change or add behaviour to all instances of an object type. This requires no changes in the UI code. A TBO can be defined to create new actions on an object type. However client applications should have customized/configured to call these new actions.
The following diagram shows how the TBO is invoked by client application
TBOs must be developed using java only. Documentum provides composer tool to deploy the TBO and related jar (if required) into repository.
SBO stands for Service Based Object. These are not tied to any object types and these objects can be used to perform custom action on all repository objects. They are generally used to define business logic that can be utilized by several applications. Content server has many SBOs out of the box like Inbox SBO, Workflow Reporting SBO, and Subscription SBO etc. We can write our custom SBO for common business logic and implementing Documentum Foundation Services is recommended approach than using SBOs.