These advancements, when combined with new functionality offered by today's business applications, seem to challenge the core functionality provided by document management. However, when examined in more depth, the robust functionality of today's EDMS technologies is easily recognizable. In fact, Windows95 complements EDMS rather than competes with it. An EDMS is fundamentally a relational database that is tightly integra ted with your business applications. It serves as an extension to the operating system by allowing files to have extended properties, or what is commonly referred to as a profile.
Profiles describe file contents and can be searched at incredible speed.
By employing this profile metaphor, you can get detailed descriptions of the file, as well as fielded information and security. With the introduction of Windows95, the archaic 8.3 limitation is replaced with a very reasonable 256-character limitation. This includes extended comment sections, fielded information, comprehensive document-level security and automatically updated access statistics for the file. DOC S Open from PC DOCS and Saros' Mezzanine, among other products, employ this architecture using standard SQL technology. These products maintain this additional information in the profile associated with the document.