To make it possible to administrate documents, information that specifies and verifies documents is required. This type of information is called metadata. It contains information about relationships between documents, and the properties of a particular document in its current context.

The Knowledge Provider contains two layers, the development layer and the runtime layer. The development layer is an infrastructure in which entities are stored as real R/3 development objects. Like all development objects, entities can be versioned and transported in the development layer, and are subject to the namespace rules valid in the relevant system.

When a content model is activated, it is transferred from the development layer to the runtime layer. The data is thus converted into the internal format of the runtime layer.

• Class attributes and the instances can be read in the runtime layer by means of an API.