Can Drupal Taxonomy module be used to categorize court records and briefs?

Question

I'm currently working on a project that involves moving a database of documents for court records and briefs over to a Drupal environment. One of the problems that we are faced with is how to index these documents.

In our court district, records and briefs all have a docket number which is assigned to a case. The interesting thing is that when multiple cases merge the docket numbers associated to the case become synonymous:

Case 1, documents have Doceket No. A

Case 2, documents have Docket No. B

If case Cases 1 and Case 2 merge, then Docket No. A = Docket No. B

My first inclination is to create a Docket Vocabulary and have the terms of this Taxonomy be the docket numbers. I am hoping to take advantage of the fact that terms can be synonymous.

I understand that there are several functions in the Taxonomy module that I may be able to take advantage of, including:

taxonomy_get_synonyms
taxonomy_get_related

But I'm having problems convincing my colleagues that this is the way to go, and frankly I'm not certain it's the right solution either. (Though one advantage I think is likely is that using Taxonomy in this way means we could take advantage of other taxonomy manipulating modules down the line).

If anyone has had a similar issue and can offer some guidance as to how to move forward, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

D

I've asked a related question (which I would also need to answer in order to move forward with this solution):

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2656247/can-drupal-terms-in-different-taxonomies-be-synonymous

Answer 1

This is a case for CCK. The Integer field type, most likely. If the dockets merge, edit the node, change the number. Revision history is tracked.

If you want to get fancy with the Docket Merging procedure, you will want to learn

1. How to create a custom Action.
2. How to use the Views Bulk Operations module.
3. Possibly, how to programmatically invoke the Bulk Operation via Rules.

It is a complex, but not difficult task, meaning there's a bunch to learn, but after that it shouldn't take long.