Concept
Beyond document management. Practical knowledge management. Integration of a wiki with a document management system.

Initial parts of the application

  • access control
  • document pipeline
  • search
  • categorization
  • relationships
  • archival
  • blob storage
  • namespace
  • routing/workflow
  • version
  • lock
  • publish/export
  • import
  • convert
  • statistics
  • audit
  • preferences

Notes

  1. SVN will be used as backend for blob storage and versioning of binary data. The primary motivation of this is the availability of the TortoiseSVN project which provides Windows Explorer integration. Now this is a killer feature, allowing document access and manipulation from Windows Explorer. Of course, there will be some serious integration questions to be answered, but there's the JavaSVN API available that should simplify things.
  2. Network drives will be mountable. This will partially address the problem of treating the DM system as another shared drive simply because there's so much legacy nonsense.
  3. A configurable document processing pipeline will be introduced to handle the process of adding/updating documents. Processors in the pipeline can include file conversion, text extraction, classification and notification.
  4. Categorization and relationships are important. Document collections are just a very simplistic form of document relationships. Thinking of using topic maps OR an rdf-based model to model the ontology and relationship between documents. Lots more thought has to be put into this. Basically the KM portion of the app.
  5. Daisy's concept of document=multiple binary parts + metadata will be used. Operations such as transformation or conversion ops can be performed on parts, depending on type. Multiple file formats of the same part will be supported. Thinking about how to map the relationship between parts, if present.
  6. Metadata is variable, but cannot be used to sort docs. Different document purposes will have different metadata templates. New document purposes can be created.
  7. Documents archived offline are retained as records in the database, but the binary parts have been moved to another location. You can include physical assets that cannot be added to the repository, such as a file box, microfiche or physical piece of evidence. These assets are represented in the repository using an electronic record and tracked using bar codes and scanners.
  8. LDAP should be supported for pluggable user management.
  9. Provide support for record management, the idea that a document has to be kept in archive for a certain period of time for accountability purposes, based on a retention policy.
  10. Support confidential comments to documents.

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