Who out there can lead me in a good direction toward a quality Document Management Software Suite. I have looked at FileNet & Hummingbird so far.. We are trying to make large steps in this direction and want info from those packages already being used (pros/cons).
Documentum by EMC Software ( http://software.emc.com ) is a widely used package. I do not know if it is the best, but there has been plenty of integration with this package and CAD software. I helped do an implementation and go-live with the software and was pleased with the outcome. Like any enterprise software, it needs to be well planned and thought thru before throwing it out to the users.
I did some research on a few that integrate seemless into MSOffice Suite and run right in the users session. Most of these also will except other formats...dwg, pdf, etc. Declined on these because of the volatility of MS and having to upgrade due to changes in the Office file formats .
Beware! Most full-fledged document management systems are what is known as CICO (Check In Check Out) systems. As such, they're all about being in total control of your documents. But unfortunately, straight out of the box, they're more often in the way than they are an aid. This is mainly because they're document centric, and because they're only well integrated with common document-centric tools like MS Office.
I could write a book about this here - but won't. But my opinion is that one can get the benefits of a document management system without one. To back up that claim, consider the fact that many owner/operators and engineering companies continue to employ document control personnel (and often need even more of them) to manage their documents after implementing their document management systems.
The important issue is having a solid procedure and following it religiously.
That said, don't overlook MS SharePoint. It's probably a bit less onerous than others. There's another very lightweight program out there called Columbus you may want to look at. It doesn't claim to be a big doc control solution, but the makers know the engineering business - which is more than you can say for any of the other true doc management solution providers.
I am currently looking into managing data in SharePoint from scripts and programs (not for a AVEVA deliverable, before anyone asks - I want to shift some of the record keeping of interface regression-tests onto AVEVAs intranet). It looks perfectly feasible (after all it is one of the sorts of thing SharePoint is for) but will include significant programming. I am using C# for it, but it is also possible to use, for example, VB.NET or macros in Microsoft Office programs.
I have not found a way to drive it directly from Perl or PML. You could use SYSCOM in PDMS to kick off an external program to interface with SharePoint or another system, but getting answers back is more complicated than ideal.
