An Architecture for Secure Document Flow

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An Architecture for Secure Document Flow
Archival Systems

• Hussam Al-Sawadi
• Department of Information Computer Science
• King Fahd University of Petroleum Minerals
• May, 16 2005

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Agenda

• Introduction
• Document Flow Systems.
• Document Flow Types.
• WebDAV Protocol.
• The Studied Document Flow Systems.
• Limitations of the Studied Systems.
• Scope of My Work.
• My Solution DFWDAV
• Architecture
• Implementation
• Routing Reminding Agent.
• Document Flow Client.
• Flow Definer
• Snapshots of the System Screens.
• Contributions Achievements.
• Questions.

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Document Flow Systems (DFS)

• Environment Documents Users.
• Stages Creating Revising Updating
  Finalizing
• Applications annual reports, proposals,
  collaborative authoring
• DFS Document Management Systems (DMS).

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Document Flow Types
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WebDAV Protocol

• Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning
  protocol.
• An extension to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
  (HTTP)
• The most recent network protocol for document
  applications.
• Defines a standard infrastructure for document
  collaboration across the Web.
• It is developed by the WebDAV working groups in
  the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
• The following WebDAV standard documents (Request
  for Comments (RFCs)) have been issued
• RFC2518 (Base)
• RFC3253 (Versioning)
• RFC3744 (Access Control)
• More under development (Searching)

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The Studied Document Flow Systems

• I studied and compared the following fifteen
  systems
• An Engineering Document Management System (EDMS)
  .
• Alliance.
• DocMan.
• DReSS (Document Repository Service Station).
• Oxford Radcliffe Hospital Document Management.
• BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work).
• Document Flow using Smartcard System.

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The Studied Document Flow Systems

• EnAct.
• Document Management with Intranet Settings (An
  extension of Lotus Notes).
• AllianceWeb.
• GroupWriter.
• Web-based Groupware System Based on WebDAV
  Protocol.
• MS Office Annotation System.
• Form Flow.
• X-Folders .

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Limitations of the Studied Systems

• There are several limitations with some of the
  studied document flow systems such as
• Limited to specific applications (e.g. annual
  reports, proposals, collaborative authoring).
• Incorporate the flow functionality with the
  applications.
• Not fully automated.
• Depend fully on commercial products.
• I developed a document flow system that overcomes
  the above problems.

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Scope of My Work

• Designing a document flow system that overcomes
  the previous problems with the following
  features
• Manages the production of documents.
• Defines and assigns flow definitions to
  documents.
• Automates document flows between users.
• Analyzes document flows.
• Notifies users by the suitable information
  automatically via emails.
• Provides historical information about the actual
  flows of documents.

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My Solution DFWDAV

• It is short for Document Flow system based on
  WebDAV protocol.
• A generic document flow system.
• An infrastructure for document collaborative
  applications.
• Based on the most recent network protocol
  (WebDAV).

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DFWDAV Architecture
WebDAV clients

WebDAV server
Document flow client
Document repository

Local temporary document repository
Routing and reminding agent

Non-WebDAV document editors
Flow repository
Flow definer
Mail server

Mail client
Client
Server
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DFWDAV Implementation

• Application Collaborative authoring system.
• Flow type Sequential
• Environment
• OS Windows 2000 Server.
• Tested WebDAV Server
• Apache HTTP Server.
• Oracle Enterprise Edition.
• Tamino WebDAV Server.
• Document Repository
• File system.
• Oracle database.
• Flow Repository
• Oracle relational database.
• WebDAV Clients
• DAV Explorer.
• MS Office.

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Routing Reminding Agent

• Acts as the engine of the system.
• Observes the user operations on the documents and
  their flow definitions.
• Analyzes the flow definition and takes the
  appropriate actions.
• Sends emails to the users to do some actions
  based on the state of the document flow.

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Document States
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The State Diagram of the Flow Progress
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The Agent Processing Flowchart
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HandleDownloadStatus Procedure
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Types of Notifications

• Download notification.
• Upload notification.
• Canceling notification.

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An Email Generated by the Agent
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Document Flow Client

• Provides useful information to the users such as
  their responsibilities and notifications.
• Can be used to download and upload documents
  between the document repository in the server
  subsystem and the local document repositories.

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Document Flow Client
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Flow Definer

• It defines the flow definitions which include
• the users who are supposed to handle some
  documents.
• The flow attributes for each user
• Number of downloading notifications.
• Downloading notification period.
• Working period.
• Number of uploading notifications.
• Uploading notification period.

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Flow Definer
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Snapshots of the System Screens
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Apache HTTP Server
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Tamino WebDAV Server
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SAP Portals Enterprise Portal Server
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Xythos WebFile Server
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DAV Explorer
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Accessing WebDAV Repositories via Web Folders
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Direct Editing of WebDAV Documents using
Microsoft Office
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XML Spy Accessing WebDAV Repository
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Tamino WebDAV Basic Client
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The Notifications Screen in the Flow Client
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Defining Users Screen
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Defining Documents Screen
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Flow Progresses Screen
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DFWDAV Comparison Features
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Contributions Achievements

• Designing an architecture for document flow
  systems.
• Designing and developing an agent which handles
  the document flows.
• Providing a proof of concept implementation for
  a collaborative authoring system.
• Comparing several possible implementations.
• Showing the wide support of DFWDAV by open and
  commercial software.

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Questions