SDL Connected: Important Tridion Integration Questions

We learned about disruptive, yet innovative, technologies in the first day of SDL Connected, my team's knowledge sharing event. From cloud use seen in today's clients, to interesting projects our partners are working on, to updates in Microsoft development stack and our own Media Manager, it looks like 2014 and 2015 will be just as interesting as 2011. Get ready for the 5 Stages all over again (but it'll be easier this time, trust me).

Questions

Such updates should prompt three questions from any experienced Tridionaut:

1. How will it work with BluePrinting?
2. How will it work in DTAP?
3. How will it work in the Fifth (personal) and Sixth (training) environments? This includes licensing as well as a potential one-to-many relationship (as seen when starting cloud training instances).
4. Update: How will it work with Create, Read, Update, and Delete (plus search/list and publish)?

For example, for Media Manager, we have:

1. BluePrinted. The MediaManager Connector, as an External Content Library (ECL), is "somewhat BluePrint aware." Items are shared throughout a BluePrint and you can localize Tridion-side metadata if you have any configured. Most importantly, you can pass querystring parameters such as subtitle, voice over, and backslide (sl, vo, and bl respectively) to the unique distribution URL to get a shared (video) asset with the correct localization or translation.
2. Shared across DTAP. Unless you license multiple Media Manager accounts, DTAP could have multiple SDL Tridion environments share a Media Manager connection. Frank Taylor was asked the same question and has used a test folder of sorts in his implementations.
3. One-to-Many Environments. Personal and Training environments may also connect to the same Media Manager connection, which means training exercises should be unique to individuals. Personal naming conventions for creation can help, otherwise read-only access (using a distribution on a page, for example) is fine. With more awareness of the Media Manager Web service, I'm sure we can also work out smart ways to clean up and organize items.

Considerations for an Answer

Whether your background is system architecture, object-oriented design, data modeling, or content modeling, the same principles apply:

• What are the systems, classes/objects, data, or fields? How many are there?
• What are the relationships? Are there sets (-tuples) that belong together. Are the items related one-to-one (1:1), one-to-many (1:many), or many-to-many? Are there limits such as minimums or maximums?
• How will CRUD work? With CMS you also have to consider publishing and search in addition to create, read, update, and delete (P-SCRUD?). Update: I moved this up as an important fourth point.
• Which way do updates work (which way do the arrows point?)?
• Who will manage which parts and where?

BluePrinting, DTAP, and ad-hoc environments, got it?

Bonus: apparently I missed publishing my CRUD post. I guess it's a 2-for-1 kind of blogging day.