Development of a multimedia document management system for cooperative work environment

The authors discuss a technical document management system where a large volume of documents are maintained by cooperative efforts of work groups using DTP (desktop publishing) software. The implementation of Jenesys is discussed. Jenesys is a technical document management and authoring system for aircraft maintenance information which consists of more than 100 types of documents. The major characteristics of Jenesys are the database of documents, integration of DTP software to create high-quality documents, and document creation/revision by cooperative efforts of work groups. The RDB+pointer method is a powerful, orthodox solution based on the assumption that approved documents cannot be modified without creating a new record for the revision. By adopting this method as the basic structure of the document database, this technical document management system was designed. >