The Document Management lecture had a substitute instructor.
V. Balasubramanian
who substituted for Professor Bieber. The guest in class for
this lecture was G. Rao.
The class started
with definitions of document,characteristics of electronic documents and document management. These
were on the class
handouts.
Balasubramanian stated that document management was one step
ahead of database management. The main reason is that
document management includes the management of content as
well as its attributes.
Documents are becoming the primary asset of companies.
Managing this information
is critical, because business knowledge is included in these
documents. Rather
than document management it may be better considered
knowledge management.
There are organized groups that are working on
standards for Document Management. Some examples
are:
Open
Document Management API
(ODMA).
This organization created a platform
independent API and platform specific registration
and binding specification for
document management.
Document
Management Alliance (DMA).
The DMA organization is a task force of the
Association for Information and Image Management
(AIIM) International. It is made up of more than
fifty commercial and government organizations,
including end users, vendors, system integrators,
consultants, and industry analysts. DMA is
dedicated to defining interoperability standards
for document management products.
Some common
attributes of documents that are stored in document
management systems are: the author of the document, title,
subject, description, key words, creation date, modify date
and version number. Document management allows the
management of multiple attributes. Content management consists of the content text,
graphics and indexes as well as
other information that are included in documents.
Functions
of document management systems:
create/capture
store/organize
control
access/version
transmit/route
review/annotate
retrieve/synthesize
assemble/publish/print
retain/archive
Benefits
of document management:
Document
management support all document formats with a good
user interface.
Capability
of import and export of different types of
documents and formats.
Allow
organization of documents through cabinets, which
the user is able to create.
Different
layers of security models that the user can choose
based on needs.
Document
management allows for established workflow based
routing.
Maybe
most important, document management is a
collaborative environment
For
large documents, you can break the document into
virtual documents or modules so that many authors
can work on the document. Then all the pieces can
be assembled later.
when
a document is done you can freeze it so no new
versions are done.
Possible
Challenges with document management systems:
Users
sometimes dislike using document management because
the work can be monitored
Redefining
workflows to work with document management can be
difficult
defining
role and privileges can be time consuming and a
difficult task
People
are used to working on a document by themselves.
Training is needed to teach people to break a large
document into smaller documents so that multiple
authors can work on the same document at the same
time.
Evolution of Information Management Systems:
File Systems
Database Management systems (ex.Hierarchial,Networked,Relational,Object Oriented)
Document Management Systems - managed documents in native formats like Word,Powerpoint,Excel etc.
Knowledge Management Systems/Org.Memory Systems.
Org.Learning Systems - Enables people to share each others experiences and learn.
Web:
The lecture
briefly discussed document management with the Web. Some
problems with the web is differences in browsers and link
management can be very difficult. There is re-addressing of
sites done every day. Also, some pages just go away, so the
links to those pages become invalid. Management of these
links via document management is difficult just based on the
volatility of web links.
