Network - Document Management
Document management refers to the range of tasks and considerations that may arise in relation to the online creation, modification, and storage of simple, compound, or hypertext documents. Internet Domains INTERNET TOP-LEVEL ORGANIZATIONAL DOMAINS DOMAIN NAME INTERPRETATION com edu gov int mil net org Commercial organization Educational institution Government agency or organization International organization U.S. military Networking organization Nonprofit organization Domain Names in Internet Addresses n A simple document contains text and possibly formatting commands, but no graphics, voice, etc. n A compound document-also known as a multimedia document-can include graphics, sound or video, in addition to text. n A hypertext document is one that contains links to other documents or other locations in the same document. With INTERNET TOP-LEVEL GEOGRAPHICAL DOMAINS DOMAIN NAME INTERPRETATION DOMAIN NAME INTERPRETATION DOMAIN NAME INTERPRETATION aq ar at au be bg br ca ch cl cn cr cs de dk ec ee eg es fi Antarctica Argentina Austria Australia Belgium Bulgaria Brazil Canada Switzerland Chile China Costa Rica Czech and Slovak Republics Germany Denmark Ecuador Estonia Egypt Spain Finland FR GB GR HK HR HU IE IL IN IS IT JP KR KW LI LT LU LV MX MY France Great Britain Greece Hong Kong Croatia Hungary Ireland Israel India Iceland Italy Japan South Korea Kuwait Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Latvia Mexico Malaysia nl no nz pl pr pt re se sg si su th tn tw uk us ve yu za Netherlands Norway New Zealand Poland Puerto Rico Portugal Reunion Sweden Singapore Slovenia Soviet Union Thailand Tunisia Taiwan United Kingdom United States Venezuela Yugoslavia South Africa 286 Document Management the appropriate software, a user can access the material associated with such links from within the document. Hypertext documents may be simple or compound. The materials accessible through a hypertext document may be located in different places. For example, the material accessible from a home page on the World Wide Web (WWW) might be located on machines scattered all around the world. Tasks such as the following are considered part of document management. Note that in some cases the required tools are generic, and are not tied to document management systems. For example, encryption or compression programs are used for purposes other than document management. n Creation. Documents may be created in many different ways: by scanning existing documents for text (and possibly also for graphics), with an ordinary text editor, word processor, desktop publishing program, or hypertext (e.g., HTML) editor. Depending on the method used to create the document, the result may be a simple or a compound one. n Storage. A document can be stored as one or more elements. The media on which a document is to be stored may be considered primary, secondary, or tertiary. Primary media are those that are almost always available and very frequently used. Hard disks are the best example of a primary medium. Secondary media are also almost always available, but have much slower access times than primary media. CD-ROM drives are a good example of secondary media. Tertiary media are available only upon request, and they usually have slower access times than primary media. Tapes or discs that must first be mounted are examples of tertiary media. n Retrieval. Users must be able to call up and view documents. Ideally, the online view of a retrieved document should be comparable to a printed version. That is, formatting and layout information should be preserved. This requires the use of special viewers or browsers that can interpret the formatting and layout commands and can translate them into the appropriate display instructions. Popular viewers include Acrobat from Adobe, World- View from Interleaf, and DynaText from Electronic Book Technologies. n Transmission. To be truly useful, a document management system must be accessible to multiple users. These may be in different geographical locations. Consequently, it may be necessary to send a document from one location to another. The transmission should be as efficient and inexpensive as possible, but should be error-free, and should leave the document unchanged. n Reception. Just as it must be possible to send a document to specified locations, it must also be possible to receive the document at that location. Resources must be available to reconstruct the document (for example, if it was sent in packets) and to check its integrity. n Revision. Very few documents are perfect right from the start. As a result, users must be able to revise documents. For simple documents, this can be done using a text editor; for compound documents, more sophisticated editing capabilities are needed. Editors that can use markup languages such as HTML (HyperText Markup Language) or its more general and powerful predecessor SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) are becoming increasingly popular. n Compression. Compression reduces a document's size by taking advantage of redundancy in the document. This saves storage and also saves money when the document is transmitted. Compression of compound documents can get complicated since different types of compression algorithms are most appropriate for text and images. n Encryption. Encryption makes a document more difficult to use if stolen- since the document will be gibberish to anyone who doesn't know the encryption method or key. Document encryption is particularly important with personal and financial data. Encryption and compression are often used together. In such cases, it's extremely important to do things in the correct order. For example, compressing and then encrypting is most effective for text documents. If such a document is transmitted, the algorithms must be applied in reverse order at the receiving end-that is, decryption then decompression. Document management software can be grouped into three categories: n File managers, which generally work with only a single or a limited number of file formats. During storage, documents may be converted to the supported format, which may be proprietary. n Library managers, which handle documents in their native formats and which include security capabilities. Library managers can also track document versions. n Compound Document Managers, which treat documents as virtual entities that are always subject to change. Instead of handling a document as a static object, a compound document manager sees a document more as a set of pointers to various elements, any of which may be revised between one viewing and the next.