Disclosed are methods, apparatus, systems and computer program products for database system communications with external content management data sources. In some implementations, the data sources are identified in a user interface. An authorization selection enables authorization of a given identified data source, and a customization selection enables customization of one or more search settings for searching content of the data source. Persistent objects representing content objects of the data sources can be stored in one or more databases. A database search can be performed on both native database files and the persistent objects.