XML and SQL: Developing Web Applications

Document Management and Content Locking

Document management systems use the concept of a “workflow state” to track documents as different people work on a document. For instance, a news article might be required to go through several editorial stages before it can be published. The document's life cycle starts with the author creating it and subsequently includes the document being reviewed by an editor and checked by a copy editor. Additional stages are writing a headline and producing graphics for the article. The final stage in a document life cycle is publication. You could write an entire book about designing workflows, but here we're just going to touch on the topic and its relevance to designing a system that uses XML and SQL.

These workflow ...