Relations in Nuxeo EP 5
Document relations are a major component of modern document management systems, because documents often impact each other. It becomes critical to be able to rationalize these relations to optimize the use of the ECM application.
Nuxeo EP 5 provides by default a relation engine (NxRelation) which handles all the relations between documents and their updates. NxRelation is based on RDF, a standard for relation definition, storage and management (all relations can easily be exported into RDF format if needed).
NxRelation helps to define “relation types” (verbs) used on documents such as:
-
Requires / isRequiredBy
-
VersionOf / isVersionOf
-
Related / RelatedBy
-
Replace / ReplacedBy
-
Quote / isQuotedBy
-
etc.
Of course, this list can evolve according to the needs of the project.
Relations between documents are defined automatically (e.g. triggered by a workflow transition) or manually (users can add relations on each document by choosing a relation type and a target which may be an internal document, an external URL, etc.). A relation can be added on a document or a version of a document.
Relations are the best way to create semantic links between documents and to use this relation network to optimize the document management. A view of the network of relations is shown on each document.
Relations and document modification
When a document is modified, it may impact other documents stored in the content repository and switch them, for example, to an obsolete status. Nuxeo EP 5 uses relations to record these impacts and define an impact tree. It is then possible to automatically change the document status or send an alert.
Email: 
11-15 Betterton Street, London, WC2H 9BP, United Kingdom
