DMA Promotes Information Anywhere

Gordon E.J. Hoke

Two groups that sought to separately define industry specifications for version control, security, and other document services have joined to create the DMA (Document Management Alliance) and expect to release their first specifications this month. The goal: to make the information in documents available to anyone on a network, regardless of the application or interface.

DMS (document management systems) can help a company manage its memos, reports, and contracts, but incompatibilities among different systems result in isolated islands of information. The frustration that results from these incompatibilities is compounded as companies move to global networks.

The DMA formed in April 1995 when companies behind the DEN (Document Enabled Networking) effort, includin g Novell and Xerox, joined with the IBM- and Saros-led Shamrock Document Management Coalition. The DMA task force is organized under AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) International in Silver Spring, MD. Frank Dawson, a senior programmer for IBM Software Solutions (Roanoke, TX) and cochairman of DMA, says the DMA wanted to coalesce around a common API while the industry was still young and relatively unstructured. First working demonstrations of product interoperability could occur later this year. The DMA, says Roger Sullivan, vice president of marketing at document management and work flow software vendor KeyFile (Nashua, NH), could eliminate the "myriad of formats" document managers and developers face today.

Most vendors and analysts are encouraged by the DMA, which will define three core elements ( see the table ). Others worry the DMA will freeze innovation. "Standards work best when they evolve around something that happens de facto, not de jour," says He rb Edelstein, principal at Euclid Associates (Potomac, MD). "When you have lots of vendors, the tendency is to use the lowest common denominator."

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DMA GOALS

-- A common interface for integration of the access and search methods 
     of individual library services.
-- A uniform API for accessing and searching across diverse document-
     management services.
-- An object-based data model for standardizing access to enterprise 
     library services. The model will allow for modular integration of 
     library services where vendors could support either specific 
     components or implement the complete model.