This Standard ECMA-137 consists of two parts:
Part 1: Document Filing and Retrieval – Abstract-Service Definition and Procedures
Part 2: Document Filing and Retrieval – Protocol Specification
The Document Filing and Retrieval Application (DFR), provides the capability for large capacity non-volatile document storage to multiple users in a distributed office system. This facility is particularly useful in an environment where a large population of desktop workstations that have limited storage capacity require access to large expensive storage devices.
Documents have associated attributes, to facilitate and control retrieval. Use of these attributes according to given algorithms will enable documents in the document storage to be browsed, retrieved, managed and deleted in a variety of ways. Access control protects documents from unauthorized operations. Documents can be stored in nested groups. References to documents and groups can be created and also stored in nested groups. With specific attributes a document can be designated a version of another document. Single documents, references or groups can be moved from one group into another group. Enumeration of groups, identification by other attributes besides names, identification by conditions over attributes, search for documents meeting search criteria, concurrent access to the same document, reference or group of documents are further functions provided by this standard for the user requirements in an office environment.
The Document Filing and Retrieval Application is a Distributed Application located in the Application Layer of the Reference Model for Open Systems Interconnection (see ISO 7498). It should be noted that a Document Filing and Retrieval Application will provide storage for an open-ended set of document types. The content of the documents stored is transparent to the Document Filing and Retrieval Server.
NOTE 1 – This Standard deals with individual Document Filing and Retrieval Servers, it defines the Document Filing and Retrieval (DFR) Protocol. The Standard governs the interactions of a Document Filing and Retrieval Client and a single Document Filing and Retrieval Server. Future standardization will consider the facilities of a Distributed Filing and Retrieval Server System and the need for inter-server protocols and a DFR Administration Protocol. It is intended that the results of the initial standardization work be extendible and support this future work.
NOTE 2 – This Standard does not presently include administration aspects of the Document Filing and Retrieval abstract-service. For the time being these aspects are left to local implementation, although they are candidates for future standardization.