Hypermedia document and workflow management based on active object-oriented databases

Abstract

Challenging application domains for workflow systems such as electronic publishing and technical engineering require equally progressed document management features. This is due to the fact that document management within these application domains is characterized by huge amounts of data, highly structured documents, as well as hypermedia information. Integrating existing services for workflow management based on an active object-oriented database system with document management based on commonly accepted international standards like SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and HyTime (Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language) allows to benefit from the advantages of both technologies. This results in document-based workflow management systems which can cope both with frequently changing organizational requirements and with the exchange of platform independent interlinked documents across system boundaries.