Dokumenttipohjaisiin

Dokumenttipohjaisiin refers to approaches and systems that treat documents as the central unit of information, rather than discrete fields in rows of a relational database. In this approach, a document is a self-contained data object that includes content, metadata, and sometimes relationships to other documents.

The concept is used in information management, content management, and data architecture. It is commonly implemented with document-oriented databases such as MongoDB or CouchDB, and in document-centric content management and case-management platforms. Features include flexible schemas, full-text search, indexing, versioning, and access control at the document level.

Applications include management of contracts, medical records, legal filings, knowledge bases, and archival materials, where the unit of interest is a document rather than a set of normalized fields. The approach supports user-centric retrieval and collaboration, and often aligns with business processes that revolve around documents.

Advantages include modeling flexibility, scalability, and natural handling of complex, semi-structured data. Limitations include challenges in enforcing cross-document consistency, implementing complex cross-document queries efficiently, and potential performance trade-offs with highly normalized databases. Integration with metadata standards and taxonomies improves search and governance.

In practice, dokumenttipohjaisiin approaches may be combined with relational data and event-driven architectures, enabling document-centric workflows within a broader information system.