Welcome to the Document Management Alliance's DMA 1.0 Specification! This specification has been approved by the DMA Advisory Council for general use, as of December 24, 1997.

This specification enables interoperability between document management applications and systems. This document consists of four primary sections:

• Overview. Read this section to get a high level understanding of the DMA vision and approach to interoperability.
• DMA Architecture. Read this section to gain an understanding of the overall DMA architecture.
• DMA Reference. Read this section to understand the details of the DMA object model, the set of COM interfaces defined by the architecture, and the definition of DMA conformance.
• DMA Appendix. Read this section to see DMA code samples, and the DMA Glossary.

This specification uses a subset of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) to depict objects, relationships and classes. Figure 1 explains the notations used in this specification. For more information on UML, visit http://www.rational.com/uml.

The Document Management Alliance (DMA) is a task force of AIIM International dedicated to the realization of a uniform approach for creation and operation of enterprise-wide document-management systems. The primary product of DMA is a specification for an integration model and the interfaces by which applications and services from a rich variety of sources can be integrated into a document-management solution.

The AIIM DMA Task Force was created in April of 1995. It was formed as a result of a merger of two previous document management standards efforts - DEN and Shamrock. DMA milestones are listed below:

• April 1995. DMA created as AIIM Task Force
• November 1995. DEN/Shamrock Convergence Document published. This document represented a first pass at a unified architecture, consolidating work done in DEN and Shamrock. Also, scope of DMA 1.0 architecture specified.
• April 1996. DMA prototype at AIIM Show and Conference. Six member companies of the DMA Task Force cooperated to produce a working prototype of the draft DMA architecture described in the DEN/Shamrock Convergence Document
• September 1996. 0.75 version of DMA specification published, showing progress to date on DMA specification.
• February 1997. DMA 0.9 specification published. 6-9 month trial use begun.
• April 1997. DMA prototype at AIIM Show and Conference. DMA member companies cooperated to produce another working prototype, this time based on the 0.9 specification.
• September 1997. Trial use coverage completed.
• November 1997. DMA 1.0 specification published -- incorporating trial use refinements -- for discussion, review, and vote.
• December 1997. DMA 1.0 specification approved unanimously by the DMA Technical Committee and then by the DMA Advisory Council for general use.

Future DMA activities will be driven by market interest generated by vendors and users using the DMA 1.0 specification. At this time, we believe that future activities could include work in the following areas:

• Interoperability with other proposed standards (e.g., ODMA, WfMC, WebDAV)
• Additional work on DMA/Internet interoperability (e.g., Java)
• Additional support for compound documents, content-based search, security, directory service integration, transactions, and/or audit trails.

The DMA Technical Committee wishes to acknowledge the support and encouragement of the following individuals and organizations:

• DENrock participants. Technical and marketing staff from IBM, Saros, Novell and Xerox/XSoft worked through many difficult technical, cultural and business issues to create the merger of DEN and Shamrock that created DMA.
• All the member companies of the AIIM DMA Task Force. Each of these companies understand that the growth and success of the document management market, for both vendors and users, is dependent on cooperative efforts such as the DMA Task Force.
• AIIM International. Within AIIM, the following staff members (past and present employees) have been critical to our success: Cheryl Chadwell, Judy Kilpatrick, Jeanette Rogers, Barbara Talbott, Jeff White, and Marilyn Wright.
• DMA member companies that have hosted DMA TC meetings or working sessions: Autodesk, EDS, FileNET, IBM, Interleaf, Novell, Saros, and Xerox.
• DMA member companies and their representatives that contributed software or expertise to live DMA demonstrations at the 1996 and 1997 AIIM Shows and trial use prototypes:
• Eastman Software (including separate work done by Eastman Kodak, Vantage, and Wang Software before they combined) -- Diane Entner, Richard Hogg, Jerry Jaworski, Lasantha Jayasinghe, Rex Lin, Mark Orpin, Rita Rapoport
• EDS -- John Klavanian
• FileNET -- Tanmoy Dutta, Chuck Fay, Jim Green, Glenn Peterson, Michael Seaman, Craig Takenaga
• Hyland Software -- John Loper
• Interleaf -- George Florentine
• Xerox -- Charlotte Baltus, Larry Bonham, Shuyuan Chen, Gary Gocek, Dennis Hamilton, Jim Mayer, Richard Sauvain, Jock Williams, Tom Wills
• DMA member companies and their representatives that participated actively in Technical Committee meetings in 1996 and 1997 to develop this specification:
• Autodesk -- Myles Cagney
• Canon Information Systems -- Lee Farrell
• Documentum -- Jim Donahue
• Eastman Software (including separate work done by Eastman Kodak, Vantage, and Wang Software before they combined) -- Diane Entner, Richard Hogg, Lasantha Jayasinghe, Jerry Jaworski, Rex Lin, Mark Orpin, Todd Trimble
• FileNET -- Alan Babich, Chuck Fay, Dan Whelan
• Fuji Xerox -- Yuji Ikeda, Hiroaki Machida
• Fujitsu -- Ralph Ferris
• Hyland Software -- Alfonso Zubizarreta
• IBM -- Jay Unger
• Interleaf -- George Florentine
• Napersoft -- Tom Grannan, Scott Herter
• Novasoft -- Carl Theobald
• Oracle -- Fred Carter, John MacNaughton
• Saros (now FileNET) -- Bernard Chester, Jim Green, Glenn Peterson, Michael Seaman
• Toshiba -- Nobuhisa Yoda
• Xerox -- David Elliott, Dennis Hamilton, Richard Sauvain, Judith Slein, Jock Williams, Tom Wills
• DMA member companies and their representatives that participated actively in Advisory Council meetings in 1996 and 1997 to develop user requirements, promote DMA, and provide direction to the Technical Committee:
• Aetna -- Mike Gotta
• Boeing -- Benton Ong
• DFR Technologies -- Jean-Fran¸ ois Tougard
• Documentum -- Matt Shanahan
• Eastman Software (including separate work done by Eastman Kodak, Vantage, and Wang Software before they combined) -- Diane Entner, Jerry Jaworski
• EDS -- Ernie Castillo
• FileNET -- Lenny D'Amico, Mike Stiles, Ken Tarmas, Dan Whelan
• Harper Collins -- Kevin Vaughn
• Hewitt Associates LLC -- Dotty L. Posto
• Hyland Software -- John Loper
• Interleaf -- George Florentine
• Myers-Tierney Associates -- Linda Myers-Tierney
• Napersoft -- Tom Grannan
• U.S. Department of Justice -- Dan Schneider
• Xerox -- David Elliott, Dennis Hamilton, Jean Derick Heminway
• Xplor International -- Toby Cobrin
• WebDAV Chair Jim Whitehead, for his participation in DMA Technical Committee meetings to facilitate synergy between WebDAV and DMA.
• FileNET Technical Writer John Kinsky, for all his editorial suggestions improving the readability and clarity of the final specification, and for his creation of the PDF rendition of this specification.