Document Management Application Architectures
Document Management systems are similar to search systems, but place more emphasis on managing the data that is distributed throughout the network. The main capabilities of such systems include:
- Peer and User Discovery - Allowing peers and users to discover and be aware of each other
- Document Discovery - Allowing peers and users to discover and be aware of documents that may exist on the network
- Peer and User Communication - Allowing peers and users to communicate with each other, including allowing the transference of documents
- Peer, User and Document ID - Allowing peers, users and documents to be uniquely identified on the network
- Version Management - Supporting the versioning of documents, change tracking, concurrency and various other document management facilities
- Security - Providing security within the system
- Data Management - Allowing data to be stored and managed on the peers
- User Interface - Allowing for the creation of a document management user interface for the peers
- Network Structure - Allowing for the creation of de-centralised and semi-centralised systems
Semi-centralised: Server Node
Server nodes within a semi-centralised document management system would typically store and manage the documents that exist within the system, and would also possess functionality to support version control and document management facilities (represented by the DMS layer and Version Control layer). The Authentication layer, aside from authenticating peers on the network, could also authenticate access to the documents.
Figure 1 - Document Management Server Architecture
Server peer Layers
- Server Control/GUI
- Document Management System
- Version Control
- Checking in/out data
- Awareness Monitor
- Authentication
- Message Resolver
- P2P Network Layer
- Network Interface
Semi-centralised: Client Node
As with most of the other client architectures, the
Awareness Controller is liable to be one of the more important components for
this kind of system. It would need to
maintain contact with both the server and other client peers in an attempt to
keep consistency of sharable documents. Client nodes would typically request
documents from the server, and upload them if necessary.
Figure 2 - Document Management Client Architecture
Client peer Layers
- Application/GUI
- Awareness Controller
- Message Resolver
- P2P Network Layer
- Network Interface
Decentralised Node
As with shared workspace systems, it is likely to be difficult to make a dependable decentralised document management system. With such a system keeping track of documents within the network would be much more difficult, and so concurrency issues may arise. Such issues could be caused by the latest version of a document being offline when it is required, or by multiple copies of the document being edited at the same time. For a decentralised document management system to succeed it will be necessary to resolve such issues.
The layered architecture presented here assumes that such issues can be resolved. It extends the client architecture presented above by including mechanisms to handle the different document versions that are likely to exist on the network. In addition the node would also need to handle the decentralisation specific issues (e.g., publishing, discovery and message routing).
Figure 3 – Document Management Decentralised Architecture
Decentralised peer Layers