Document Exchange Considered Useful – Extending the Reach of DBMS-Functionality to Documen.pdf

Document Exchange Considered Useful – Extending the Reach of DBMS-Functionality to Document Driven Processes Alexander Hilliger von Thile DaimlerChrysler Research and Technology P.O. Box 2360, 89013 Ulm Germany +49 (0) 731 505 4840 alexander.hilliger_von_thile@ ABSTRACT predominating. However, for non IT experts in many cases other In today’s enterprises documents are preferred by most users for criteria such as simplicity, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of data exchange in spontaneously started and frequently changing just creating a desktop document without the need to code are key processes because documents (e.g. spreadsheets) are easy to create criteria. It is important to understand that the main reasons for and to edit. This causes well known problems such as poor data document exchange are non-technical. This explains why quality due to missing constraint checks, no up-to-date data in documents are still preferred even though plenty of alternatives – backend systems (e.g. for analysis), and missing multi-user such as WfMS or groupware systems – are available. support. These problems could be avoided by using special Today, using documents causes serious problems because in applications that store their data in a DBMS. But for end users contrast to DBMS, they are not stored centrally, they contain this is significantly