3.4 Indexing
Indexing tracks electronic documents. Indexing may be as simple as keeping track of
unique document identifiers; but often it takes a more complex form, providing
classification through the documents' metadata or even through word indexes
extracted from the documents' contents. Indexing exists mainly to support retrieval.
One area of critical importance for rapid retrieval is the creation of an index topology.
3.5 Storage
Store electronic documents. Storage of the documents often includes management of
those same documents; where they are stored, for how long, migration of the
documents from one storage media to another (hierarchical storage management) and
eventual document destruction
3.6 Retrieval
Retrieve the electronic documents from the storage. Although the notion of retrieving
a particular document is simple, retrieval in the electronic context can be quite
complex and powerful. Simple retrieval of individual documents can be supported by
allowing the user to specify the unique document identifier, and having the system use
the basic index (or a non- indexed query on its data store) to retrieve the document.
More flexible retrieval allows the user to specify partial search terms involving the
document identifier and/or parts of the expected metadata. This would typically return
a list of documents which match the user's search terms.
3.7 Distribution
A published document for distribution has to be in a format that can not be easily
altered. As a common practice in law regulated industries, an original master copy of
the document is usually never used for distribution other than archiving. If a
document is to be distributed electronically in a regulatory environment, then the
equipment tasking the job has to be quality endorsed AND validated. Similarly
quality endorsed electronic distribution carriers have to be used. This approach
applies to both of the systems by which the document is to be inter-exchanged, if the
integrity of the document is highly in demand.
3.8 Security
Document security is vital in many document management applications. Compliance
requirements for certain documents can be quite complex depending on the type of
documents. Some document management systems have a rights management module
that allows an administrator to give access to documents based on type to only certain
people or groups of people. Document marking at the time of printing or PDFcreation is an essential element to preclude alteration or unintended use.