Patent ID: 7155662

Claim:
A computer document management system for representing an entity as a document using a data source having associated properties and content information related to the entity, the system comprising: a bit provider configured to: i) identify the data source as having the associated properties independent of a specific user request associating the associated properties and the data source; ii) retrieve the content information from the identified data source; iii) provide the retrieved content information as at least a portion of the document; further wherein at least one of said properties is an active property incorporating executable code that affects the behavior of the document within the document management system; and further comprising: an application interface in communication with the bit provider, the application interface configured to provide the document to an application, the bit provider further configured to: iv) receive additional content information from the application via the application interface; and v) send the additional content information to the entity via a communications path in order to modify the document representing said entity.