Concepts

Document Model

Documents have various functions: They may be paper documents in the classical sense of the word, but may also be document templates, macros or notes, among other things. In addition, documents may be related to other documents. For example, a note created for a document has a particular relationship to the document itself. In the BDS document model therefore, documents are characterized by attributes and relationships. Attributes relate to the document type ID. Relationships are represented as "belongs-to" relations between documents.

In connection with the BDS document management system, a document is considered within the framework of its whole life cycle. For this reason, the sequence of content, language and format versions comes into consideration when defining a document. Context information and relationships with other objects and documents are also involved.

Business Document Set

The business document set is a central component of the BDS document model. A business document set contains all documents belonging to an application object. The set may contain just one individual document or several documents and their versions and variants. The connection of a documents to an application object can be brought about by a direct relationship, or indirectly by relationships within the document (for example, where there are content or language variants).

Individual documents can be addressed directly. Either the entire document including versions and variants or specific content versions or specific variants are addressed.

Isolated Documents

An isolated document is one single document that exists in one single version and one single variant. In this case, there are no relationships at all between this document and other documents. An isolated document can be addressed using the following parameter combination:

• DOC_ID

  Document ID

• DOC_VER_NO

  Document content version ID

• DOC_VAR_ID

  Document variant ID

Versioning

The content of documents can take various forms. These forms are called content versions or versions. Each 'predecessor' version has one 'successor' version, which in turn has one successor version and so on. This BDS linear content versioning is characterized as follows:

• Each new version is appended to the linear chain of versions as the latest version.

• Versions are listed.

• Every version can be updated and/or deleted.

Variants

As well as existing in various content forms, documents/document content can be in various languages or formats. For example, a document may be a text editing file or an HTML file, in English or in French. In the BDS environment, these specific version types are called language and format variants or simply variants.

The following variant types are supported:

• LA

  Language variant

• FO

  Format variant

• OR

  Original

The variant principle is shown in the diagram below:

• All variants are of equal status, that is, the original document is not marked especially.

• The set of variants is not structured.

• Variants are numbered.

• New versions relate to the set of variants as a whole.

• Every variant can be updated and/or deleted.

Relationships

Between physical documents, there can be relationships to logical documents. These relationships are expressed by the belongs-to relationship type:

Methods

The central BDS class CL_BDS_DOCUMENT_SET provides three method sets for checking documents from various sources in and out:

• Access via URL

• Access via file name

• Access via internal table

For more information, see the sections under Methods.

Standard Attributes

The following standard attributes are available in the BDS: