Design and Evaluation of a Distributed Document Management System

RBRO Solutions专注于主要面向法律行业的文档管理系统，他们有兴趣扩展其产品线，以支持协作和文档共享。这一领域的大多数现有解决方案都基于一个集中的服务器，所有共享文档都存储在这个服务器上。在这种方法中，公司失去了对其文档的控制，管理不同各方的访问可能会变得复杂和耗时。RBRO提出了一种分布式文档管理方法，将文档存储在每个合作伙伴的单独服务器上，并使用交易室服务器来协调对这些文档的访问。本研究项目的目的是评估这种形式的分布式文档管理系统的可行性。在这个项目中，将设计和实施新的文件管理方法的原型。这个原型将被用来非正式地评估这种方法的功能和性能。如果成功，这将为全面商业化产品奠定基础。

RBRO Solutions specializes in document management systems mainly for the legal industry and they areinterested in expanding their product line to support collaboration and document sharing. Most existingsolutions in this area are based on a centralized server where all the shared documents are stored. In thisapproach companies lose control of their documents and managing access for the different parties can becomplicated and time consuming. RBRO is proposing a distributed approach to document management wherethe documents are stored on each partners' individual server and a deal room server is used to coordinate accessto these documents. The purpose of this research project is to evaluate the feasibility of this form of distributeddocument management system. In this project a prototype of the new approach to document management willbe design and implemented. This prototype will be used to informally evaluate the functionality andperformance of this approach. If successful, this will form the basis for a full scale commercial product.