Whats the best way to implement a simple document management system?

Question

I am planning to build a simple document management system. Preferably built around the java platform. Are there are best practices around this? The requirements are :

1. Ability to upload documents
2. Ability to Tag documents
3. Version the documents
4. Comment on documents

There are a couple of options that I am currently considering. The first option would be a simple API on top of SVN or CVS and use a DB backend to track tags, uploader, comments etc

Another option is to use the filesystem. Version the documents as copies in a versions folder and work with filenames.

Or, if there is an Open non GPL'ed doc management system, we could customize it to our needs and package it in our application. Does anybody have any experience building something like this?

Answer 1

You may want to take a look at Content repository API for Java and the several implementations (some of them free).

Answer 2

Take a look at the many Document Oriented Database systems out there. I can't speak about MongoDB or any of the others, but my experience with Couchdb has been fantastic.

http://couchdb.apache.org/

best part of it is that you communicate with it via a REST protocol.

Answer 3

The best way is to reuse the efforts of others. This particular wheel has been invented quite a bit of times.

Who will use this and for what purpose?