Document Management for an Application

Question

We are designing an application which would also have a need to manage a large number of files (docs, spreadsheets, scanned files, pdfs, etc.). We will need to associate files with other data in the system.

This will be a web-based application.(asp.net)

While there are many ways to solve this problem, I am thinking whether there is document management backend which we can plug into the software, and use its API to store, retrieve and reference files.

There must be some, but do you know of any open source ones that you have used in the past.

Thanks.

Answer 1

It would be helpful to know what platform you are using. Since most of my experience is with the Java platform here's some links:

JSR-170: Content Repository API http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/123

And here is the reference implementation, Apache Jackrabbit: http://jackrabbit.apache.org/

Answer 2

There are quite a number of commercial Document Management Systems out there, and they are configurable to the various categories you need to store. They generally also support revision control and archiving. Examples include:

• OpenEDMS
• Documentum
• ProArc
• Filehold

Also read more here: Wikipedia article

A Google search can identify hundreds of offerings, including those from Oracle and IBM.