Integrating EDMSs and DBMSs - High-Performance Web Databases: Design, Development, and Deployment - page 538

An important consideration in Exhibit 1 is that any process of reduction
or distillation results in a tremendous amount of other “stuff” that does not
make it into the final version. This stuff is lost. Consequently, one advan-
tage offered by functional decomposition is that the process reduces real-
ity or a body of information to its elementary components that represent
one or at least a very limited perspective on this body of information. This
enables the construction of a database. The “bad” aspect of functional de-
composition also relates to its strength, namely, that the process reduces
reality or a body of information to its elementary components that repre-
sent one or at least a very limited perspective on this body of information.
Much of the original body of information can be lost in the process.
THE ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT
Before comparing the DBMS with the electronic document management
system as an information repository, it is useful to build a common under-
standing of the definition of a “document” in the context of this discussion.
The first thing that most people think of in any discussion of a document
is paper. This is due to the fact that most of today's generations have grown
up with paper as the most common medium on which documents have re-
sided. A piece of paper or a collection of pieces of paper is usually referred
to as a document, especially if it has a collective purpose. Paper, however,
is very limiting and is just one method of representing a document. It is cer-
tainly not the only way. Even if one disregards the electronic medium for
the moment, there is a myriad of ways that documents have existed and do
exist. There are stone tablets, scrolls, hieroglyphics, paintings, carvings,
and more recently film, just to mention a few. Even the scented letter is a
document that is more than just scribbled words on a piece of paper. The
scent can convey more information than the words.
If one includes the electronic medium, then a document can be much
more than is allowed in the limited paper medium or in anything that has
been described above. A document can contain voice-annotated video,
with graphics, still images, and drawings with backup text. One can imag-
ine the vast information content of a document of this nature.
The second feature that people think of when discussing documents is
the concept of a page. This is also due, in all probability, to the association
of documents with paper. People, in general, have an optimum quantum of
information on which they can focus at any one moment. This is an aspect
of what psychologists call bounded rationality. A page is probably an opti-
mum quantum of information. Represented on paper, information could ap-
pear in the format that is most familiar; however, in some other form it
could be quite different. The concept of a page is useful and will probably
evolve as the understanding of documents evolves and as this understand-
ing moves beyond paper as the common representation of a document. It