Document Management

Question

We looking for a simple, open source, web based document management system for Linux. With document management I mean the ability to store a set of files (minimally doc, xls and pdf) as a document. Associate meta data with the document like owner and version. Update and delete documents. Ability to index and search content. Authentication and the ability to authorize at least read, and possible write. If possible I would like to avoid implementations in Java or PHP, and as we use MySQL already that would work especially well for meta-data storage.

We have used Google Applications in the past but the lack of support for PDF makes it a poor fit. Other downsides include their service losing some of our spreadsheets, no concept of company owning information opposed to individual accounts, and some of our information is sensitive and we prefer keeping it in-house (passwords, contracts etc).

MediaWiki was not a good fit either as our documents is really a set opposed to be structured content (i.e. not looking for a content management system), and at least the version we had installed did not deal well with attachments.

Based on review of past questions I plan on looking into KnowledgeTree. Any other projects that we should consider?

Answer 1

I've been using KnowledgeTree now for a few months developing an ASP.Net application and I only have good things to say about it. Our product uses it for PDF storage/retrieval and it really couldn't be easier to deal with. The basic install gives you a simple environment with almost endless amounts of configuration for meta-data, document groups, and various security options. Also, the KnowledgeTree staff have been very helpful and have provided us with sample code when we have run into 'how are we going to do that?' moments.

Answer 2

Look for something that will index all your document formats and keep them searchable.

I solved this in my office using Coldfusion. It has verity search engine built in. This indexes files on your network (doc/xls/pdf, etc) to make the text in them searchable (like google).

An instant search engine for all my files, for upto 150,000 or so is built in for free with Coldfusion so it suits my purpose.. Something like this would allow you to save your files on a network how/wherever and you'd be able to extract the rest of the information about owners, modification dates through libraries available in java / .net.

I am sure you could replicate this with another language, but probably a bit more effort. I am presently wishing I could use the Google Docs API as a wysiwyg editor in my own wiki in-house.. that would solve most of my problems then because everything would be intranet based.