Document Management Systems (DMS) have been valuable network collaboration tools for many years in many types of document-centric businesses. Law firms are among the most prolific users of DMS technology today. More and more businesses are coming to realize that having tools which manage the overall security and general access of documents is not unique to the legal industry alone. Document management capabilities such as access and version control, check-in/check-out management, full-indexed text searching of all documents or selected subsets and specific case concurrency represent some of the major requirements expected in any DMS.

With the Web now taking over much of the publishing and viewing of traditional documents, it becomes imperative to examine how the same advantages found in a traditional DMS can be realized in the Web environment. As document management activities increasingly migrate to Web Sites and continue to use the ubiquity found in the HTTP protocol, enabling that protocol to embrace the more complete set of functionality found in a traditional DMS becomes more critical. Delivering increased DMS functionality to a Web Site is a major goal of the WEBDAV (WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning) Working Group.

This session will:

1) Explore and demo the powerful benefits realized through a traditional DMS.

2) Identify some emerging standards efforts addressing the Web Site management of documents.

3) Explore and demo a prototype of one possible Web Site management paradigm.

4) Examine how DAV represents the foundation layer for delivering Web Site management at the client, server and given DMS level.

5) Suggest future directions and scenarios that should be considered and pursued in this arena.