Documents Management System

[unixkd]

Hi all. Merry Xmas.

I studied Donnay document management sample program and feel is a nice one. I used ADS and intend to save the documents to BLOB fields instead of folders used by Donnay because I have no way to password folders in Windows drives. Has anybody done a similar thing and want to share experience ?

Thanks.

Joe

[Cliff Wiernik]

We actually use a commercial document manage system called Onbase from Hyland Software. An expensive system to use. For their document management process, they save the files as single page or multi page TIF's to folders on the server where it is broken out in total folder size so it can be saved to offline storage. The retrieval is based on a MSSQL database. They have their own document access program, but within our application, we access the MSSQL database via SQLEXPRESS which provides us with the location of the files and then use a ActiveX library to display those TIF files.

But the key thing I wanted to point out is they put the documents into individual TIF files. I think they are concerned about the potential corruption of large data files/BLOB's.

[c-tec]

Hello,
in my big DMS I use folders because I think that it is more save then in a database because of possible corruptions. I some smaller solutions I use MySQL and SQLEXPRESS and BLOB fields. I use files PDF because it has much more possibilities like embedding other files, encryption and scripts (with QUICKPDF). I cannot guarantee a customer that I can repair a database after corruption. I cannot be sure that all customers make correct backups, so I have to care about the best solution, and I think this is with folders.
regards
Rudolf

[rdonnay]

in my big DMS I use folders because I think that it is more save then in a database because of possible corruptions.

I agree. I am writing a new system for a customer in which XML, TIFF and PDF documents are downloaded every day. The XML is parsed out into database fields and the original documents must be preserved. There is absolutely no way to even consider putting these documents into a single database.

[unixkd]

Hi

Happy new year to you ALL. I appreciate your contributions. I need to add that I intend to use ADS (ADT tables) Client Server in this proposed application. I had never experienced DATABASE corruption with ADS ADT. I think it is one of the high points of ADS. We may only consider ProgreSQL in future. ADS has two API funtions AdsFileToBinary() and AdsBinaryToFile() that makes saving ANY type files to BLOB seamless. Unless I have a way to Password protect folders on a Windows drive, I may have to proceed with my option.

Thanks.

Joe.