Case Studies

Background

The client was operating their content platform on Sitecore and planned to migrate to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). Unlike traditional CMS migrations, the content needed to be structured using AEM Guides (DITA Maps and DITA Concepts).

This required not only content migration but also transformation into a DITA-compliant XML structure while preserving relationships and hierarchy across thousands of content assets.

Task

The primary objective was to migrate structured content from Sitecore APIs into AEM Guides while maintaining:

• Content hierarchy using DITA Maps
• Content structure using DITA Concepts
• Accurate referencing between content assets
• Compliance with XML and DTD constraints

Additionally, the system needed to handle unsupported HTML tags, special characters, and platform limitations without manual intervention.

Solution

• Designed a transformation-driven migration architecture
• Built a custom Java-based processing layer for JSON → XML conversion
• Used internal com.adobe.fmdita.* APIs for DITA asset creation
• Implemented reference mapping using FMIDs and GUID-based linking
• Handled unsupported HTML tags through transformation logic:
  • <strong> → <b>
  • <img> → <fig>
  • <abbr> → <abbreviated-form>
• Removed invalid characters (\n, \r, \t) and encoded special characters
• Implemented DTD validation to ensure XML compliance
• Created custom DTD to support client-specific XML tags
• Handled XML editor limitations (GUID-based rendering)

Results

• Successfully migrated structured content into AEM Guides
• Automated transformation of HTML content into DITA-compliant XML
• Preserved content relationships using GUID-based referencing
• Reduced manual content cleanup and migration effort significantly
• Established a scalable and reusable migration framework