Technologies for Document Management

Underlying Infrastructure : The rapid developments in EDM

are partly the result of advances in basic technology infrastructure.
These enabling technologies can be organized in five major
categories.
Stronger desktop workstations
o Based on RISC technology
o Large, high resolution colour screens
o Permit the display of documents, a full page or two at a time,
delivering non-text media such as voice, video, and animation.
Storage media
o High capacity storage media holds the large volume of bits
required for multi-media documents
o Optical storage media such as CD/ROMs and laser disks
 Technologies for Document Management
(Contd)
Networks
o Interconnect the workstations, within and between organizations
o Increasingly high bandwidth to transmit the large volume of data
contained in electronic documents and forms
o Eg. broadband ISDN, and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

User friendly software

o Graphic user interfaces (GUI), is enabling the multitude of people
who handle paper documents, to deal more easily with
documents on computers
o To managing thousands of documents on the desktop workstation
o Eg. Information Visualization project at Xerox PARC and Piles
Interface at Apple
 Technologies for Document Management
(Contd)
Operating Systems
o Client/Server operating systems and network management
systems are increasingly document oriented.
o New operating systems shift focus from the application to the
document, They are Object Oriented.
 Technology Architecture for EDM
In addition to the underlying technology infrastructure, there
is a set of technologies aimed directly at handling documents.
It is often called document middleware.

There are actually two sub-layers in document middleware:

1. Functions for document processing
2. Functions for document management
Technology Architecture for EDM (Contd)
Technology Architecture for EDM (Contd)
Capture and Creation
o Technologies to digitize information
o For documents already on paper, hardware and software digitizes an
image of a page, and electronically handles that image.
o Scanners capture the image while algorithms convert it to digital form,
with compression to save storage space
o Software can capture full text in editable form in a variety of fonts,
sizes, and formats.
o Pattern recognition techniques can recognize voice, some images, and
patterns in graphics, animation, and video
Storage and Organization : The primary developments are
o Compound document architecture
o Distributed storage management software
o Integration of documents and databases
o Hypertext
Technology Architecture for EDM (Contd)
Compound Document Architecture : Architecture is required for the
different objects that make up a compound document to be handled
together.
Objects : text, graphics, spread sheet, digital photograph

Distributed Storage : Documents are stored on local PC hard drives,

servers, mainframes, and large repositories.

Integrating Documents and Databases :

One approach is to define a BLOB (binary large object) as part of a
tuple in a relational data base.

Hypertext : Software which implements a hypertext structure enables

non-linear access to the logical structure of text within a document,
and multiple cross references between documents.
Technology Architecture for EDM (Contd)
Retrieval and Synthesis :
o Information retrievalselects documents from a collection
according to the presence or absence of keywords assigned by
an indexer.
o Text retrieval uses algorithms that eliminate the need for an
assigned index. All content bearing words are indexed.
o concept retrieval uses thesauri and word concurrence analysis
to select documents that use similar, but different words to
represent a concept
o Queries can result in a list of selected documents ranked in
order of likely relevance.
Technology Architecture for EDM (Contd)
Transmission and Routing : Email systems are moving beyond
simple text messaging to become the primary transport mechanism
for electronic documents and forms.
Other functionality required for business transport of electronic
documents includes:
1. Authorization - assuring that the correct user is accessing the
workstation and documents
2. Authentication - assuring that the "digital signature" of the
user is valid
3. Encryption - coding and decoding documents for security
4. Filtering - automatically routing messages or documents
according to their content
Technology Architecture for EDM (Contd)
Print and Display : For display of documents, an important
technology is the wide variety of digital printers and copiers on the
network.
Printers significantly reduce the need for pre-printed forms.
Desktop printers permit distributed printing of richly formatted
documents.
Network of printers requires a set of software to manage the
distributed printing. Print services on the network will include, for
example, usage and activity reports, downtime and repair reports.