Modeling Concepts

The Knowledge Provider administrates not only document-like objects themselves, but also the relationships between objects. As well as document-like objects, the Knowledge Provider also administrates the relationships between documents. Knowledge Provider also has a powerful versioning concept. Versioning can be implemented for the attributes language, format, and content.

The modeling concepts described below have been developed to facilitate the administration of documents in complex environments.

Logical and Physical Info Objects

The differentiation between logical and physical IOs is the key to the concepts of versioning and dynamic relationships.

A logical IO is a logical representation of a document in all its possible forms. A logical IO therefore describes the abstract aspect of a document, while the physical IO describes the physical aspect. Every logical IO can contain several physical IOs. Physical IOs are characterized and differentiated by their attributes. By creating a relationship between one IO and another, you define the type of interdependence between the documents.

Logical and physical IOs with interdependencies

In the Document Modeling Workbench (transaction DMWB), logical and physical documents are classified by means of their characteristics, which facilitates document handling and processing.