A DOCUMENT REPOSITORY ARCHITECTURE FOR
HETEROGENEOUS BUSINESS INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Mohamed Mbarki
1
, Chantal Soulé-Dupuy
1, 2
and Nathalie Vallès-Parlangeau
1,2
1
IRIT, SIG/D2S2 Team, Paul Sabatier University 118 Route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse, France
2
Toulouse I University, 2 rue du Doyen-Gabriel-Marty 31042 Toulouse, France
Keywords: Repository architecture, architecture modules, document integration, document exploitation.
Abstract: As part of business memories, document repositories should bring some solutions to ensure flexible and
efficient uses of dematerialized information content. While the fields of repositories modeling, document
integration and interrogation have independently attracted a huge amount of attention, few works have tried
to propose a general architecture of document repository management. Thus we propose a repository
architecture based on the integration of different complementary modules ensuring an efficient storage of
fragmented digital documents and then flexible fragments exploitation. This paper presents also an
implementation of such architecture of document repository.
1 INTRODUCTION
Today’s increasing of documents sources makes of
their integration and exploitation a real need. The
document integration provides a unified
representation of heterogeneous documents owing to
generic documents model. This unified modeling
will facilitate documents access and exploitation.
The use of documents repositories seems to be a
relevant solution to achieve these goals. These
repositories permit to constitute shareable spaces in
which information can be seen as a whole or like a
piece of global information according to the need of
any user. Starting from this integrated information,
the repository must allow their processing according
to several viewpoints, and via several techniques
(document retrieval, multidimensional analysis, text
mining, etc). Indeed, it should collect and classify
the information, by means of suitable procedures, in
order to produce synthesis that will be used to
support decisional processes, as well as to globally
control the enterprise activities. To leverage the
impact of document repositories use in the handling
of large sets of documents and in the decision maker
process, several challenges should be addressed.
These challenges include lack of flexibility to
customize information storage, exploitation and
presentation according to user’s profiles.
The management of document repositories can
be ensured by Electronic Document Management
System (EDMS). An EDMS serves as an access
portal to other applications. Hence, an EDMS allows
to dematerialize, to classify, to store and to manage
documents from computer applications in the frame
of the organization activities. Our proposition
presents an extension of EDMS functionalities
concerning the integration and the exploitation of
heterogeneous documents. Indeed, these systems use
usually fixed document organizations and they are
disable to extract (complex) hierarchical structures
and even less to carry out comparison between such
structures in order to classify them. Moreover
document exploitation within EDMS is based on
simple textual interrogation languages. Hence, the
use of graphical interrogation might ensure a flexible
and easier exploitation (especially for novice users).
Our ultimate goals are to contribute to the
resolution of the above issues and facilitate
information access and exploitation to any user. We
propose in this paper repository architecture to face
the previous challenges. We start by an overview of
existing works that aim at solving problems of
document modelling and interrogation. The next
section is devoted to a presentation of the document
repository architecture we propose. We illustrate the
use of this architecture through the development of
an illustration example in the last section.
2 STUDY CONTEXT
The relevant issues in repositories content are the
definition of document models and querying
192
Mbarki M., Soulé-Dupuy C. and Vallès-Parlangeau N. (2007).
A DOCUMENT REPOSITORY ARCHITECTURE FOR HETEROGENEOUS BUSINESS INFORMATION MANAGEMENT.
In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - DISI, pages 192-198
DOI: 10.5220/0002364301920198
Copyright
c
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languages which permits to manage the
heterogeneity of document structure, content and
associated metadata.
2.1 Modelling
A document repository organizes and structures
information for content retrieval. In this context,
document modelling is one of the key issues. The
modelling is used to determine which information
should be stored in a repository and to reflect the
relationships between the document parts. In order
to be able to handle the various types of data
including text, images, videos and audio, several
models were proposed. These models can be
classified in two categories according to their levels
of completeness in the holding of the multimedia
document description.
The first category gathers works which aim at
modelling each type of media separately. These
approaches do not manage the fitting of several
media in only one document. (Loisant and al., 2002)
propose a metamodel that can be used to describe
any type of media. The goal of this metamodel is to
provide an independent media base to generate
specific models. Each one corresponds to only one
type of media. (Moënne-Loccoz and al., 2004)
provide a model to manage the specificities of video
documents. This model ensures the recognition of
the temporal aspect and the diversity of the video
document descriptors (high and low level).
The models of the second category cover all the
media composing the document. They transcribe
links that connect the various mono-media
components of the same document. (Amous and al.,
2002) extend classic approaches by adding a set of
metadata specific to each type of media in order to
formalize information relating to the document
content. (Darmont and al., 2002) propose an
approach that presents the multimedia documents
within a unified format by using XML language.
This facilitates their structuring in document
databases. Indeed, they propose a conceptual model
that generalizes and presents any type of document
in the form of a complex object. They use some
characteristics (name, keywords, duration, etc.) of
these documents to index them.
All of these works suppose that semi-structured
documents cannot have always a pre-defined
structure and that each document has its own
structure. Nevertheless, we can notice that
documents describing the same type of information
or aiming at the same intention of use (example co,
documentary emission, etc.) have usually similar
structures and/or are annotated with the same set of
metadata. It would be then interesting to be able to
find these similarities and to deduce generic
documents classes and not to remain at a specific
level. The use of these generic classes will facilitate
the exploitation of the bulky documents repositories
contents by focusing research only on the needed
collection (Mbarki and soulé-Dupuy, 2004).
Moreover, the majority of these models do not
provide a clear separation between the structure and
the document contents descriptions. What induces a
lack of clearness, consequently documents handling
becomes harder.
2.2 Documents Exploitation
With a semi-structured and especially multimedia
document, research cannot be based solely on a
predefined tabular schema like in classic databases.
Otherwise it would not permit the exploitation of the
different metadata used to annotate document
content. This need gave birth to a new generation of
querying languages.
The contribution of LOREL (Lightweight Object
Repository Language) (Goldman and al., 1999)
resides in the flexibility of semi-structured
documents interrogations, even though we do not
know their structure. The easiness is offered by the
introduction of path expressions.
XQuery (a Query Language for XML) (W3C, 2003)
permits to interrogate a XML document according to
different criteria. This language is often called the
SQL of the XML. It permits to elaborate complex
queries. It is a hybrid language between XPath and
SQL. It is capable also to browse the arborescence
of a XML document, to carry up the information
required by the user and to create a new document
containing only the needed granules.
The power of these interrogation languages
resides in the manipulation of document structure.
The documents used by these languages are
generally constituted by short and precise elements
(title, authors, etc.). To interrogate and to manipulate
documents that contain elements having important
size (section, paragraph, etc.), a combination of such
languages with the information retrieval techniques
is necessary. To overcome this shortcoming, we
propose a specific language permitting to interrogate
documents according to their structures and their
contents. The noticeable difference between our
proposition and the previous languages concerns the
complexity of queries. Indeed, in our approach the
user can see the document organization (tree) while
interrogating. The graphical language that we
propose provides on the one hand a best
management and comprehension of the document
composition and on the other hand an easy querying
because the user does not need to have a previous
knowledge about interrogation languages.
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3 OUR PROPOSITION OF
DOCUMENT REPOSITORIES
ARCHITECTURE
The document repository architecture is composed
of four modules (cf. Figure 1) that interact together
in order to provide a global repository management.
The first module ensures administration tasks by
allowing the definition of the appropriate rules to
integrate relevant information from disseminated
sources. This module allows also repository
administrators to fix a second set of rules concerning
the access and the manipulation of the integrated
information. The second parts contain a set of sub
modules aiming at decomposing document into
fragments, extracting and comparing structures and
integrating both content and structure. The
exploitation of the repository content is based on the
creation of views that answer to a particular need of
a specific user on presenting relevant pieces of
global information. The manipulation of the
Figure1: Document Repository Architecture.
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previous modules by the user is carried out through a
graphical interface.
3.1 Administration
Administrators review metadata and content prior to
final storage into repository. They control also
different content submission and review parameters
for each document collection and user groups
defined within the repository. Moreover, they limit
access to certain content based on the levels of
user’s rights.
With the overwhelming growth of multimedia
information and their accessibility through
disseminated sources (the Web, classic archives,
enterprise networks, etc.), the information filtering
become today an obvious need.
Once documents are stored, we can control two
key points in the repository content manipulation:
information access and information use. Access
controls limit who can view, receive or download a
document (according to user’s rights). Use controls
determine what a user can do once the document has
been accessed (interrogation, update, suppression,
etc.).
3.2 Document Warehousing
After their filtering from disseminated sources,
digital documents must be rendered in some way to
make them exploitable independently of their
supports (PDA, CD, etc.). Many standards are
already proposed to give unified presentation of
document organization. As examples, we can quote
XML (Extensible Markup Language), SGML
(Standard Generalized Markup Language), MPEG7
(Motion Expert Picture Group), SMIL (Multimedia
Synchronized Integration Language). Obviously, a
previous step of dematerialization is needed if the
selected document is on a paper support.
The sub module of structures extraction aims at
extracting structures and contents of documents that
will be inserted in the repository. The structure
recognition is based on the identification of
documentary granules (document fragments, a
fragment is a small flexible and semantically
homogenous unit). For example, XML annotations
make easier the metadata identification. Such
annotations can be generated by several tools and
techniques of description: Transcriber, MPEG7,
SMIL, etc. It should be noted here that our approach
consists in extracting, integrating and organizing
structures in the repository and not to annotate the
multimedia documents.
To be able to store and handle a fragmented
multimedia document under several facets and
several points of view without being obliged to
manage a huge amount of heterogeneous structures,
it seems important to be able to classify the
structures. Moreover, in order to ensure flexibility in
storage it is significant to be able to model
separately all the concepts related on both structural
and contents aspects.
Our documents repository is composed of
generic structures and specific structures (Mbarki
and Soulé-Dupuy, 2004). A specific structure
corresponds to only one document. A generic
structure corresponds to a collection of similar
specific structures. The document integration will
follow this repository content organization.
Before insertion, the document content must be
separated from its structure. The insertion of a
document specific structure is a rather significant
step because it determines the links between the
fragment content and a particular generic structure.
Thus, flexibility in the repository instantiation can
be ensured through the flexibility of this phase of
structure handling. This module provides three
possibilities of structure insertion according to
following cases (Mbarki and al., 2007):
− the user does not know the structure to which the
document content can be attached. We then
propose to compare the document structure with
all repository structures. It will be merged with a
similar structure or inserted as it is giving place to
the creation of a new generic structure,
− the user knows a particular structure in the
repository to which he wants to attach the
document content. Hence, the structure of this
document will be merged with this selected
structure. The fusion of these two structures is
ensured without comparison (directed insertion).
The user requires in this case the transformation
of the document structure towards a generic
structure which already exists in the repository.
To fulfill this fusion, we propose to use
operations of suppression, substitution,
displacement and modification of structure
fragments (tags),
− the user judges that the document provided is
representative of a new structure. This document
will be then regarded as a typical document (one
typical CV for example). The structure of this
document will be inserted in the repository
without comparison and thus without any
modification.
In addition to these three approaches of structure
insertion, the user can freely give the composition of
a new structure to which he wants to attach
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documents later. For example, it can propose the
generic structure of a "thesis" or an "audio
documentary".
3.3 Exploitation
We aim at managing both complex structuring of
multimedia document and the heterogeneity of their
content. In the same way, we want to provide an
easy interrogation and pleasant result presentations.
To achieve these goals, we propose to combine
techniques of multi-dimensional analysis (OLAP:
On Line Analytical Processing), information
retrieval and structured document interrogations
(SQL: Structured query language).
Several types of exploitation and analysis
operations can be carried out on warehoused
documents (using structure elements and content)
(Mbarki and al., 2005). For example, three kinds of
search and analysis can be carried out: (1) by
collection or generic structures which represent a set
of identical documents (news flashes), (2) by
document, our analysis in this case will relate to the
specific structure of a particular document (the news
flash number 12) or (3) by generic fragment (any
element, component or metadata), we use generic
fragments which can belong to different structures
(the speaker John Smith who presents both news
flashes and documentary emissions). The search
results are generated and displayed according to
intermediate views as represented thereafter.
Views are dedicated to a particular user or group
of users. They must answer to specific needs or help
users to analyze information content to achieve some
decisions. These views are generated in two main
steps:
− Step 1: Generation of an elementary view for
each analysis parameter (dimensions and fact). A
view is generated for every selected fragment
(element of structure, attribute, component or
metadata).
− Step 2: Joint and grouping of the different
generated views. The final view (result) is
generated by joining the different views generated
previously.
Detailed examples of these two views will be
given later in this paper.
3.4 Communication (Graphical User
Interface)
Repositories users can manipulate the previous
architecture parts through the communication
module. This module provides pleasant, easy to use
and yet powerful user interface to manipulate and to
interrogate document repositories. A first set of
interfaces are used by administrators to fix access
and use rights.
Concerning the warehousing module the
interface part allows:
− the selection of documents to be integrated into
repository,
− the definition of personalized structure
composition,
− the creation of structures comparison rules,
− visualization of both structure and content of
documents already integrated into repository,
− the manipulation of synonymies dictionary.
For the exploitation module the communication
layer permits to interrogate structure and content
without requiring any knowledge of classic
interrogation languages syntax. It provides the user
an intuitive set of tools for hierarchically structured
document searching, retrieved list navigation and
search refinement. Particularly, these tools ensure:
− the selection of analysis type,
− the choice of analysis axes (fact and dimensions)
and their criteria (dimensions order and fact
formula),
− the filtering of analysis results,
− the creation and the visualization of user’s views.
4 ARCHITECTURE IN USE
To illustrate our proposals, we have developed a
prototype of assistance to the multimedia document
integration and analysis MDOCREP (Multimedia
DOCument REPository). Our experimental base
contains a set of audio documents extracted from
radio emissions of RFI (Radio France International)
and of RM (Radio. Maroc). This collection was
annotated in the framework of both projects Raives
(Parlangeau-Vallès and al., 2003) and Ester
(Galliano and al., 2006). In this section, we present
an example of analysis concerning the exploitation
module
If we what to know the number of topics
expressed by each speaker in the news flashes
number "310", "311" and "312" from "Ester corpus",
we should flow these steps:
(1) Choice of analysis type
The first stage consists in selecting the type of
analysis (by generic semantic structure in our
example). Thus, the system displays the list of all the
existing structures in the repository. Among these
structures, we must choose the generic structure
"News-F-E". (News flashes Ester) Once the choice
of the structure is carried out, the system displays in
an automatic way the tree of this structure as
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showing in figure 2. The elements are represented by
ovals, the components are represented by rectangle-
ovals and the metadata are represented by polygons.
(2) Selection of components analysis
In this level, we must select and define the
analysis fragments: i.e. to specify the fact (subject of
analysis) and dimensions. The assignment of these
roles is done through contextual menus (cf. Figure
2). We must point the desired fragment and fix our
choice (fact or dimension, by a click on the right
button) as well as the attributes, namely: the order
for dimensions and the formula for the fact (Count,
Sum, Maximum, Minimum, Average, etc.). In our
example, the first dimension is "the language", the
second is "the speaker" and the third is "the flash
name". The measurement of the fact is "the count of
topics".
(3) Filtering
To select only the flashes number "310", "311"
and "312", we can use the filtering function offered
by the prototype (cf. Figure 3).
The system displays the results in the form of
multidimensional tables (cf. Figure 4). The first
dimension is represented on columns, the second
one is represented in lines. Each table represents a
value for the third dimension. The results of the fact
are represented into the tables in the form of
interrelationships between the various dimensions
values.
Figure 2: Selection of analysis components.
Figure 3: Filtering.
Figure 4: Results.
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5 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, global document repository
architecture has been presented. Digital document
warehousing is in the core of repository
management. It provides information extraction,
transformation and storage according to structure
similarities. The document fragmentation, the
partitioning in different kinds of structures and the
independence of structuring mechanisms are
significant since a document can be described
independently of uses, of restitution mode for
example. The repository administration presents
also an important task. It allows to organize the
integration, the update and the access to documents
fragments.
The validation of our proposal is based on the
realization of a prototype (MDOCREP). This
prototype allows the multimedia documents
repositories management by ensuring integration,
interrogation and multidimensional analysis of
information. We have integrated audio documents
and some works are in progress to integrate video
documents. The next goal is to propose an entirely
automatic process for repository instantiation. We
will concentrate also on quantitative and
qualitative assessment of our interrogation
approach.
Thus, this repository architecture is a part of a
more general framework aiming at implementing a
business memory management system. More than
half of information used in organizations being
stored in document, such repositories will permit to
filter, share, have access and gain from such
document contents.
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