E-Document Management Based on Web services and XML

Document management plays an important role in R&D project management for government funding agencies, universities, and research institutions. The advent of Web services and XML presents new opportunities for e-document management. This paper describes a novel solution for processing large quantities of electronic documents in multiple formats within a short timeframe. The solution is based on Web services for integrating two-tiered distributed processing. It also involves a document extraction process for handling multiple document formats, with XML as the intermediate for information exchange. The application of the solution at the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) proved successful, and the general approach may be applied to a broad range of e-document management settings.