Access to a DMA system is provided through symmetrical points of access (where clients interact with the DMA system) and points of service (where service elements are operated under the DMA system). DMA-compliant middleware manages the distribution of access, so that clients and servers can be located on the same platform, on different systems on a network, on different networks, or at remote points of an enterprise or inter-enterprise wide-area network. From the client point of view, DMA provides a uniform view of all types of documents, regardless of location, creation method, etc.

Although we tend to think of clients and services as residing on different platforms over a network for DMA it is valuable to think of both client applications and service elements as all residing at a DMA point of presence.

In the point-of-presence model, three elements are potentially resident on the same platform:

• Client application software making access to documents and collections of documents via the DMA application interface to a DMA system
• Service-element software that offers access to documents and collections by operating under the service-integration interface of a DMA system
• DMA system software that provides for integration of the local platform's DMA-compliant applications and service elements into distributed operation.

DMA manages distributed services in several ways, as shown in the diagram below. In the simplest case of a local Windows-based service element, for example, local coordination is used. Interoperability with other platforms can be handled in this way, through a Windows front end.

For services that are distributed across a Local Area Network (LAN), DMA Systems provides distributed coordination to transparently manage the network connectivity that is required.