LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Nick Morrison <nickm@bhwb.nsw.gov.au>
  To  : linuxsa <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 16:38:18 +0930

Document Management/Storage/Retreival software

Hello everyone :)

I'm currently looking into different sorts of Document Management software.
I don't necessarily want Open Source or Free (although that's slightly 
preferable..) - but I do want the following:

 - relational database driven - preferably PostgreSQL or Oracle
 - storage of documents in sgml/xml format
    - so I can publish on the intranet/web/etc
    - ... and a nice editor to go with it
 - client definitely windows 9x compatible -> preferably web-based :o)
 - totally expandable and configurable and scalable and cool
 - designed with both developers and end users in mind
 - a damn good support contract ;)

It's going to store lots of things - mostly documents like procedures and
policies and howto's and so on, for a "small business" of less than 100
employees.  The documents will need to include things like pictures and
sounds etc, but I know that sgml/xml will easily deal with that.  It'll
also need to produce nice looking printouts, ..  and I know that sgml and
xml combined with postscript will do that beautifully :)

Our current system is a bloody dinosaur, is designed for Windows 3.11,
isn't really aimed at multiple simultaneous users, costs a fortune, stores
its documents in Word 6.0 format in a Paradox database, is terribly
unstructured, doesn't allow cross-referencing and is horrible and yuk to
use.  AND it's got a shocking security layer.  </rant>

I can envision exactly what I want..  I could almost write the damn thing
myself using Postgres, Perl, PHP, Caffeine, and all the xml extensions
that are around... and in fact I'd love to... but I don't have the amount
of time it'd need to do it *properly*.

I know that there's a great deal of that *kind* of software out there...
but I am looking for anyone's personal experiences.  I'm also having
trouble finding software that suits exactly...  a lot of the packages are
bloody closed and proprietry, or use database engines like Paradox and
Btreive and MS-SQL, which I am not particularly interested in, for various
reasons.

Does anybody have any recommendations, suggestions, comments, thoughts...
etc?

Many, many thanks in advance.

:o)


--
Nick Morrison
nickm@bhwb.nsw.gov.au

Information Technology Officer
Phone:  +61 8 8082 5813
Fax:    +61 8 8082 5822
Mobile: +61 4 1486 0844

Broken Hill Water Board
PO Box 442
Broken Hill, NSW 2880

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