 |
| Home
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
||||
creation, permanent retention, to destruction, this life cycle can change at any given time and involve numerous storage media's along the way. The
key to an Electronic Document Management (EDM) is employing systems that allow for seamless migration of index keys through the different storage media's used during the life cycle of the document.
The storage media used during the active phase of a document could be
entirely different than the media used to archive the record for
permanent
retention. Each media used must have distinctive strengths for the
use of
the document at that particular point in time. An example of this
could be
an invoice file. During the first 30 days the records are reference
actively by customer service personnel thus the EDM system must be
able to
respond to queries almost instantly. In this case using mainframe
memory
(DASD) could be the media selected. During the next year these records
may
be used less frequently, however users still need a system that would
respond to queries in a timely manner. In this case migrating the
data to
CD-ROM or inexpensive RAID over a network could be the solution.
It would
be a tremendous waste of expensive DASD to continue to store these
records
on the mainframe. As the files are now over a year old and used very
infrequently but still must be kept, they could migrate to an off-site
storage facility. In this case CD-ROM is an excellent choice because
it is
very simple to reload the data without having to reprocess files
or reload
data from magnetic tape and the indexing keys are maintained on each
individual CD-ROM.
The standards established for CD-ROM drive manufacturing (ISO9660) insure that CD's produced in ISO9660 format can be read on any CD dive. The amount of storage potential (currently 650 megabytes per CD), the cost of "write once read many" WORM CD's, the archival time frames established for CD media, and the proliferation of CD drives on PC's, make CD an excellent choice for mid to long term data storage.
As always, it's important to remember that technology is a means to an
end, not an end in itself. The objective of an EDM system should
be a
proper business solution. CD-ROM is probably the least expensive
storage
media per megabyte today and certainly has a place in the life cycle
of
some documents. However, proper imaging expertise and application
analysis
must be employed on the front end of an EDM project to insure that
the end
results are obtainable.
: