We have a process that adds documents to Filenet P8, but without content elements, that is, the document is created in the corresponding document class along with its properties, but it does not have any content element associated with it. Subsequently, we have another process that, given the document identifier described above, adds the content to it. The only way that we have found to perform this functionality is by versioning the document, passing, for example, from version 1.0 to version 2.0. This would not be a problem except that the new version 2.0 has a different document identifier than the first step, becoming the current version of the document and deprecating version 1.0. This change of unique identifier between version 1.0 and version 2.0 has an impact on many of our systems in the way they currently work and, before undertaking further development, we wanted to ensure that there is no way to add content to a document without generating a new version and therefore a different identifier. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you.
Differents checkout options, fetchinstante(), getinstance()...
Unfortunately FileNet works as you described above, it is not possible to change the content of a document without the creation of a new version. Therefore usually the version series identifier of a document is used in the situation you described above. This identifier will remain constant accross all the versions of the document.
There is also an alternative solution. In that scenario the first process will create the document and sets the property values, but is will not perform a checked in on the document. Given the correct permissions, the second process can update the content of the document and perform the checkin. This approach will also limit the number of versions created during the whole proces.