Storing documents

joselv

Hello,

Before I try to reinvent the wheel, I wanted to ask how you folks might be approaching this.

I want to store documents (images and pdfs) for several of my BO's. I was initially adding the Document type attribute to each of my BOs but I then realized that I am then limited to how many documents can be attached.

I don't think adding 3 Document type attributes to each of my BOs is efficient, which is what I was doing.

What I would rather do is create a BO just to store ALL of the uploaded documents and the allow each BO to attach any related docs to that BO. This way there is no effective limit on the number of attachments and I can keep the attachments separate in the DB from the data.

So I am trying to decide how to implement this and I have an idea but was curious to know how any of you might be doing this.

Thanks!

kklosson

Based on your post, I would recommend creating another BO to hold the documents and perhaps there would be a few attributes with that BO like Doc Type, Uploaded By, etc. Then relate the Doc BO to the main BO, one to many, owned by...

joselv

Thx kklosson,

That what I am thinking as well.

I also realized that I could try using a tagging system where I create a Doc BO to store all documents with a 'Tag' attribute and then allow the main BO select the appropriate tags from a multi-select.

For example, If I was creating a project management system, I could have a Project BO (with Name, Tags Multi-Select) and a Project Document BO (with Name, Tags Multi-Select). I could use a 3rd BO called Tag to store the available tags to link the Project BOs and Doc BOs.

See image below. Does this look sound? Has anyone else tried using tags to manage documents?

kklosson

That looks sound to me. Take a look at how AwareIM will store multiple selections like a set of tags. So you need an attribute large enough to store the maximum conceivable number of tags. It basically stores the selections separated by an @ symbol. I would have to think for a while if you were planning to filter on multiple tags, but I'm sure there is a way.

joselv

That in interesting, I did not think about that. I will probably allow up to 5000 characters.

So far what I have tried is working nicely. I am running into one spot that I am still trying to figure out.

I will probably do a screencast to show what I've done and what I'm trying to accomplish.

Stay tuned.