— Appendix C —Electronic Document Management Standards

— Appendix C —
Electronic Document Management Standards

This book has repeatedly referred to the need to define standards as part of all system development environments (SDEs). The purpose of these standards is to identify distribution, collection, and indexing standards and functional capabilities necessary to support electronic management of this information at the lowest cost. Suggested standards are included here both as an example of the type of standards an organization should define when it wants to achieve the benefits of an SDE, and as a specific reference for organizations looking to use electronic document management.

Each of the defined standards is a requirement that selected products must be able to support. Not every application uses all the features defined nor does every product purchased contain all of the features. Selected products must have the capability to support all the relevant standards and features defined as mandatory.

A few fundamental standards are required of all systems to provide the basic platform for the sharing of electronic images:

Image indexing must be done using an ANSI standard SQL DBMS that can reside remote from the image storage location. The index must be accessible and manipulatable through user-friendly, standard application development languages subject to the appropriate security considerations.
Image presentation must be supported in a standard windowing environment.
Image distribution must support the CCITT Group III or IV fax standard.
Image indexing and entry must be supported through a communications protocol providing end-to-end message integrity, such as LU6.2, OSI, or TCP/IP peer-to-peer equivalent standards.
Imaging: Imaging is the process of converting information into a bitmapped digital format. In this format, information is represented and manipulated through its shape, not its internal ASCII or IBM's EBCDIC representation. Thus, numbers in an image cannot be added without additional conversion (a la OCR), but they can be moved, printed, and displayed.
Image Entry: Images may be entered in the imaging system from scanners, other computers, fax machines, fetal monitors, x-ray devices, fingerprint devices, digital cameras, and so on.
Workflow-Image Queuing: The workflow-management function must include the capability to receive an image and hold it for later processing.
Workflow-Image Priorities: The workflow-management function must include the capability to prioritize images in the queue. Higher-priority images must be presented first when the next image is selected.
Workflow-Image Distribution: The workflow-management function must include the capability to distribute images to named destinations (for example, users, processes, and so on). Ideally, a scripting language will be provided that allows dynamic determination of distribution destinations.
Archiving: Archiving is the process of moving images from the storage location and providing immediate access to a separate location where storage is less costly. Access may be slower and human intervention may be required to handle the archive medium to retrieve the image. An image is considered deleted when it is removed from the index; therefore, an archived document must remain in the index with appropriate information to locate its archived location.
Image Indexing: The system must provide the capability to index images on user-specified search arguments. Index searches must return a "not found" message or the image-management system required "key" to recover the image. Support must be provided for this index to be stored remotely from the image storage location. Index searches must be supported by ANSI 1 standard SQL requests. This index may be in addition to the index used by the local system for local searches or it may be the same. The indexing system must ensure that no image may be added or deleted from the permanent store without updating the index.
Image Migration: The system should not preclude the use of a hierarchy of storage devices, such as optical disks, magnetic disks, or disk caches.
Production-Class DBMS: A production-class DBMS is expected to ensure data integrity under all circumstances. Provisions must be included to ensure that once a user receives confirmation that an image is added, it can always be recovered. The image DBMS must provide at a minimum the following capabilities for index and image maintenance and access:

Automatic error detection and recovery

Dynamic backout of in-progress updates after process failure

Roll back from/roll forward to last backup

Maintenance of accurate and duplicate audit records on a separate physical medium

Support for mirrored (duplicate) images

Locking mechanisms to guarantee data integrity

Deadlock detection and prevention

Multithreaded processing

Multiuser concurrent processing
Image Folder: The system must have the capability to combine multiple images into a singly accessible entity (folder). It must be possible to access all the images in a folder as an image or one or more of the entries as an image.
Printing HPCL: Images must be printable to Hewlett-Packard-compatible laser (HPCL) printers using the standard HP Series II or better laser printer. Only printer memory should restrict the size and resolution of the printed image.
Printing PostScript-Compatible: Images must be printable to PostScript-compatible printers using only the standard PostScript language.

The following information is from specific electronic document standards published for vendors in Los Angeles County and many other counties in California, and will serve as a useful example of the type of detail which should be spelled out in a standards specification. The standards that are coded (code P) must be adhered to for all image related products procured by agencies of Los Angeles County. The standards coded (code E) are necessary in all products that are used in systems required to support document interchange in Los Angeles County.

Image Entry
PE:	Minimum resolution is 200 pel (at 1 bit per pixel)
P:	Must provide automatic indexing at entry from bar codes, OCR, and operator entry.
Fax Services
PE:	Minimum resolution is 200 pel (at 1 bit per pixel)
P:	Must provide automatic indexing at entry from bar codes, OCR, and operator entry
PE:	Must support image input via group III or IV fax (recognizing group III destination)
PE:	Must support output via group III or IV fax (recognizing group III destination)
Image Workflow
P:	Must support image queuing, priorities, and distribution.
P:	Must support the migration of images from an optical storage location to a higher-speed medium (such as magnetic storage or D-RAM cache)
P:	Must support an image archive capability.
Image Folder Management
PE:	Must support the combination of images into a single folder.
PE:	Must enable access to a single image in a folder.
Image Storage
P:	Must support the storage of images on optical storage devices.
P:	Must provide backup/recovery/restart capabilities consistent with a production class DBMS.
Image Compression/Decompression
P:	Must provide software that is 100-percent compatible to hardware used for decompression.
Image Indexing
The indexing of interest is based on the image content description (such as client number, client name, or case number).
E:	Must use an ANSI SQL-compliant DBMS for indexing.
E:	Must support index storage remote from image storage that is capable of being maintained through a peer-to-peer processing protocol equivalent to LU6.2.
PE:	Must support image existence determination without the need to retrieve the image.
PE:	Must support application program reads from the index.
PE:	Must support application program additions to the index.
PE:	Must provide backup/recovery capabilities consistent with a production-class DBMS.
Image Presentation
P:	Must support one of the following windowing environments in a "well-behaved manner": Windows 3.x, OS/2 Presentation Manager, OSF/Motif, OPEN LOOK, Nextstep, or MAC OS; this includes the capabilities to open multiple windows in an overlapped manner, to scroll windows independently, to move windows, to close windows without terminating the application, and to multitask to the extent of allowing a local, host, and image application to be active in separate windows simultaneously.
P:	Must support resolutions that adapt to the display device.
P:	Must support, at least, the following monitor resolutions with a maximum dot size of 32 mm for color images:
		70-dpi VGA for viewing less than one hour per day
		100-dpi Super VGA for viewing less than three hours per day
		150-dpi high resolution for viewing greater than three hours per day
Image Integration
P:	Must support a well-defined application program interface (API) to enter, access, distribute, and index images.
Image Annotation and Modification
P:	Must support the ability to annotate an image without physically modifying the image.
PE:	Must support the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) standards for image modification (only if image modification is allowed).
Image Printing
P:	Must support printing at least one of the following printing standards: HP-compatible Laser (HPCL) or PostScript-compatible.
Image Distribution
PE:	Must interface with one of the following e-mail standards: directly to IBM PROFS or via an X.400 gateway.
PE:	Must be able to distribute images in one of the following formats, at the option of the sender: CCITT group III or IV fax bitmapped.
Image Communication
PE:	Must operate in the following LAN topologies: Ethernet, Token Ring, or FDDI.
PE:	Must operate in the following WAN environments: SNA/SDLC, TCP/IP, or OSI.
Image Security
PE:	Must provide C2-level security against update of the index or stored images.

This security standard is defined by the National Computer Security Center (NCSC) Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria (TCSEC). A complete definition is available from NCSC; however, in general, the standard implies the availability of

Granular discretionary access controls.
Increased accountability, including configurable identification and authentication mechanisms, user auditing enabling administrative checks for potential and actual security violations, and a trusted communications path to be used when secure communications between a local user and the system are required.
Secure system administration, including the ability to define and verify the secure system status.

References

P:	Must have a referential site with the products installed or be able to provide demonstration of the product's capability to meet all standards at a site designated by Los Angeles County.

— Appendix C — Electronic Document Management Standards

— Appendix C —
Electronic Document Management Standards