Is there any way to get and process the UCM content from a Java class? What I need is to sort a content list based on the metadata field. I can get it from a .jsff page. But I need to iterate dt:contentListTemplateDef with that sorted list. Any information will be very helpful.
Have you looked into RIDC? The Remote IDC is available for both 10g and 11G UCM. It allows you to call upon (almost) every service available in UCM from within your custom java application, including searching, sorting, ...
See here for the 11g documentation.