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Tech Request - Document Management System
07-19-2010, 04:34 PM
I've been asked to set up a Document Management System (DMS) at work. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good one?
Requirements:
Freeware, with a licence that allows free use in a corporate or government environment. (I have no budget to implement the DMS.)
No maximum number of documents.
Password protection of particular documents, with each user having a unique UserID/password.
Ability to automatically update mirrors on removable media.
Runs on either Linux or Windows - I can't use a Mac-specific or mainframe solution.
Preferences: (not necessary, but would be nice)
Web interface (so the users don't need to telnet into the server to access the DMS).
Apache interface (so the documents can be displayed in a web browser).
Which solutions should I look at? Which should I avoid because they don't work?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Rob - I notice you use Windows at your location, do you guys have a Sharepoint license?
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Don't know - I'll have to check.
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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(Whee - that was fun. Fire on the floor; evacuation of building; return to building; inspection of fire scene with facilities, then landlord, then management; telling everyone else to go home; and going home myself. But I got an answer...)
No, we don't have a Sharepoint licence.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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?!
Wow.
I don't have a suggestion, sorry. I know Sharepoint has a module for it, and we had it as part of our site license.
CattyNebulart
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I use subversion for that but it's not ideal. Pretty much any source control system can manage document control but not all of them are well suited to it. If your users are tech savvy enough to use it (the problem being document conflict resolution, esspecially when dealing with non-text documents like say word or powerpoint files.) it makes a great tool for that and there is an apache module etc for it.
i believe some sourcecontrol systems have modules for supportring ms office formats.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
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the new office formats are all zipped xml documents.
so any source control software that can parse zip files shouldn't have any problem with them.
-Terry
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You can try Owl or LetoDMS (was MyDMS.)
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CattyNebulart Wrote:i believe some sourcecontrol systems have modules for supportring ms office formats. Not a requirement for this install. (We don't use MS Office internally.)
bmull Wrote:You can try Owl or LetoDMS (was MyDMS.) I didn't see "Ability to automatically update mirrors on removable media" on either of those packages' features list. Did I miss seeing it?
(I saw "Users are notified about new/updated or expired documents via email" on LetoDMS' features list, but that's only auto-notification, not auto-update.)
--
Rob Kelk
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I was thinking that you'd use a cron script, or equivalent, to do the backup as the files are in a mysql database. Something like: AutoMySQLBackup might work for you. If not, sorry, I don't know of any others for free that come close to what you are asking for.
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Yuku ate my post, so I'll just sum up.
Look at Alfresco ([url= http://www.alfresco.com),] http://www.alfresco.com),[/url] it has a free, open-source version available. My company was looking at it before we decided just to stick with a source-control app that we already had (bad move, IMO, but I'm not the decision maker). I don't know if it supports the removeable media directly, but, it operates on a shared-drive principle, which means you can set up third-party synch software for the removable media.
Also check out OpenDocMan ([url= http://www.opendocman.com),] http://www.opendocman.com),[/url] which I was personally looking at but haven't had a chance to play with yet.
--sofaspud
-- "Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
paladindythe
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I'm getting the feeling that integrated removable backup will be the gotcha. You'll likely have to use some outside sync/backup solution.
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People keep saying 'backup'; is that what you're looking for? I thought you were looking for mirrors on removable media, which is to say, a two-way synch solution.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
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Sofaspud Wrote:People keep saying 'backup'; is that what you're looking for? I thought you were looking for mirrors on removable media, which is to say, a two-way synch solution. True, but the normal use for "removable media" is as a off-site backup. Thinking about it more, if all he wants is to sync two databases on different servers he can do a Master/Master replication using MySql. Here is a link that talks about it: MySql Master/Master Replication we used it years ago to sync two greylisting databases between two ha servers. To do the failover on the servers we used Heartbeat and rsync. We only stopped using it when we went to an external spam/filtering system.
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My 'normal use' for removable media is so I can use documents on different machines without having to keep multiple copies floating around or rely on networks, which I don't always have. As just one example, I have a document I work on using any of... yikes, six different machines. Some of them are on a network, others aren't, and the way I've got my synch software set up, it doesn't matter -- I'm always working on the latest copy no matter where I go, and the master copy gets updated every time I plug in to my 'main' workstation.
Backup solutions... I dunno, I can't imagine why you'd want that incorporated into your DMS. Backing up the DMS server should be (more than) enough, and there are tons of backup solutions out there.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
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Quote:People keep saying 'backup'; is that what you're looking for? I thought you were looking for mirrors on removable media, which is to say, a two-way synch solution.
I'm not looking for backups. The group I work in is responsible for backing up everything else, so that's a solved problem - SOP for this sort of project is to back up the data, the software, and the virtual machine it runs on, all at once.
What I want is mirrors. Or, rather, what my manager wants is mirrors (one for each tech, each on a USB key) for off-site browsing. Which means either the software has to be self-contained and run off the USB key, or the "mirrors" have to be directory trees holding the documents in their native formats (rather than being databases).
Yes, I realize I just presented a new "required" feature. Sorry about that; feature creep is always a pain...
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robkelk Wrote:What I want is mirrors. Or, rather, what my manager wants is mirrors (one for each tech, each on a USB key) for off-site browsing. Which means either the software has to be self-contained and run off the USB key, or the "mirrors" have to be directory trees holding the documents in their native formats (rather than being databases).
Yes, I realize I just presented a new "required" feature. Sorry about that; feature creep is always a pain... Hmm, Owl does have a Lite version that "doesn't use a database, it reads a directory structure directly on the web server." If you can use that and mirror the directory structure to your USB keys it might work. If you look at the bottom of the link I gave there is a link to a demo of the Lite version.
paladindythe
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Could the team members have Windows Live accounts, with synced folders? (i.e. is internet accessible storage an acceptable solution?)
It's part of 'Wave 4" that was released in June.
SuperSite for Windows: Sync it. Sync it good.
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Windows Live is not an option - it doesn't meet the security requirements.
Thanks anyway...
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the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Hrm. A possibility just occurred to me. It'd be a two-part solution, but a bit of creativeness could make it work. You'd need a synch program -- a simple filesystem synch utility that can handle merging text documents, of which I'm pretty sure there are a few dozen out there.
And then you'd need DokuWiki-on-a-Stick.
It's a wiki (duh), plus a micro-Apache installation, that fits on a USB drive. It's fast and the markup is deliberately low-key; the files are stored as plain text on the drive and thus remain human-readable even if the software gets munged. This is also why a simple filesystem synch could do the trick, I'm pretty sure.
http://www.splitbrain.org...ki_on_a_stick_2008-05-05
I've been using DokuWiki (the stick version, no less) for a couple of years. It's not a full-blown DMS, but it has the security options you mentioned needing (username/password) and meets the 'stick it on a USB drive and go' requirements.
--sofaspud
-- "Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
CattyNebulart
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I believe Git or one of those other high end sourecontrol systems offers that, and if you are dealing with techs they should be big boys and capable of handeling it. Look at git and mercurial, there are other systems, but those are in large scale production.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
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I have heard good things about Git, as it allows you to synch and track changes via a local repository (which could be put on a usb key), and then later commit those changes to the central repository when you have access.
You can also do some interesting things like grouping changes for cleaner commits, but that and similar features seem beyond the scope of your needs.
So I would think it's definitely worth looking into depending on:
1) can git (either by itself or through some sort of plugin) parse the documents you are working on.
2) does the CLI to git scare your userbase?
I would also spend a few minutes and take a gander at flashbake.
http://wiki.github.com/commandline/flashbake/
it's built on top of git (so you get all that nice git goodness) but it is meant to be a source control system for writers, so it should be less scary.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
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