Extending document management systems with user-specific active properties

Document properties are a compelling infrastructure on which to develop doc ument management applications. A property-based approach avoids many of the problems of traditional hierarchical storage mechanisms, reflects document organizations meaningful to user tasks, provides a means to integrate the perspectives of multiple individuals and groups, and does this all within a uniform interaction framework. Document properties can reflect not only ca tegorizations of documents and document use, but also expressions of desire d system activity, such as sharing criteria, replication management, and ve rsioning. Augmenting property-based document management systems with active properties that carry executable code enables the provision of document-ba sed services on a property infrastructure. The combination of document prop erties as a uniform mechanism for document management, and active propertie s as a way of delivering document services, represents a new paradigm for d ocument management infrastructures. The Placeless Documents system is an ex perimental prototype developed to explore this new paradigm. It is based on the seamless integration of user-specific, active properties. Pie present the fundamental design approach, explore the challenges and opportunities i t presents, and show how our architecture deals with them.