What is Document management system?

office documents readerszone What is Document management system? While reading a computer magazine I came across the term document management system. Well all heard about the term content management system, but I never heard a term like document management system. Document managements is a software(0r set of software ) program to manager electronic data like spreadsheets, presentation, images, text documents or any kind of file that can be used as to store the data. A well designed document system can make management and sharing of documents very simple.

Software that indexes and profiles documents based on content, controls documents using such functions as check in/check out, version control, audit trails, and security of information; and facilitates searching by profile values or by some other hierarchical structure such as folders and files. DMS creates structure and access methods for electronic documents and provides a database of documents that can be searched and retrieved. A DMS does not directly address retention management and disposition, rather, it manages versions of documents currently being worked on. A DMS should be used in conjunction with a records management application (RMA). [by Texas]

Most of the document management systems address some common areas like

Location: Where the documents will be stored.
Retrieval: How documents will be retrieved. Document retrieval is concern with finding documents as well as specific content inside the documents.
Security : Security is very important aspect of document management system. Prevention of unauthorized access of documents , access control and managing different permissions on documents are the key area regarding the security.
Disaster Recovery : How can documents be recovered in case of destruction from fires, floods or natural disasters?
Creation : How documents will be created.
Distribution : How documents will be available for other people?
Archiving : After how much time documents will be archived and how people can retrieve archived documents.
Work flow : Documents work flow is most important aspect of any Document management system. Some times document may follow a order in which it can accessed or modified by other persons. It’s very important that document management system must implement a flexible document work flow system, that can be easily configurable by the end user.
Authentication/Approval : There must be come mechanism for Authentication and approval of documents, so that document management software don’t have to manage a chunk of useless documents.

We use Microsoft office SharePoint as a document management system ,but I am searching for some free open source document management system.
It is not possible for me to cover all the points related to document management system in a single article. So I will cover some more points in my upcoming articles.