Use cases

jLibrary is an atypical DMS. Its flexibility allows to use it both for personal and enterprise use. This use cases pretends to offer some tips of possible scenarios to leverage jLibrary power. But this is not a complete list. jLibrary is continuously maturing, and this will do appear more new use cases with new work possibilities. If you have found some interesting use case, tell us about it!

This document presents the following use cases:

jLibrary as a personal documentation management system

The most simple use that can have jLibrary is as a personal documentation system. With jLibrary, you can have in your personal computer a powerful document management and indexing system. With this you will can classify, index and manage documents of several types.

In this scenario the unique actor is the jLibrary client. The jLibrary client includes an internal database, in which you can store your information. jLibrary also allows loading documents, or even perform web crawling operations. This documents will be stored and indexed directly on your personal computer.

The jLibrary client doesn't need any configuration to run in this mode, because it his default execution mode. Anyway, if you don't want to use the internal database, and you have an own database, jLibrary allows you to configure it. Check the installation guide to found more information about this.

jLibrary as a collaborative workgroup tool

If you have a network connection, you can run jLibrary as a tool to share documents between your friends group, teammates, etc., and all without having to leave your home and without the need of an specific server.

The jLibrary client includes a small internal web server. In the beginning, this server only stores the jLibrary help web pages. Nevertheless, jLibrary offers the possibility to publish repository information as a web application running within this internal server.

This way, if you find some information that you wish to share, you only have to publish your repository in this internal server, and these document would be accesible through a standar web browser. This internal server executes only within jLibrary lifetime. When you close jLibrary application, the internal web server is shutdown, and the documentation is no more publicily accessible.

Another way to perform workgroup is creating a jLibrary dedicated server in your personal computer. But this is discussed on the following point.

jLibrary within your enterprise intranet

jLibrary, as well as having a client application that allows you to store and share information, have at your disposal a powerful server to centralize all your enterprise documentation.

In this scenario, you'll have at your disposal a centralized jLibrary serer (in a future clustering support is planned) where it would be stored all the documentation. In the different intranet computers it would be installed the jLibrary client, and your users would access with them to the centralized enterprise documentation. Within your server, you could have information grouped in departments, work groups, but also you could have public repositories, a repository with the corporative portal, etc.

jLibrary can be executed as an independent server. The communication between the server and the client application is done through web services. The jLibrary server can be placed in a dedicated machine, the database in another one, and even the file system storage could be placed in a third dedicated server accessible through some protocol like NFS.

One of the advantages of jLibrary is that it allows to perform remote an local work to their users. If for any reason your corporative server goes down, and you don't have any high availability system, your employees could continue to work leveraging the jLibrary feature of having internal local repositories.

jLibrary in your enterprise intranet and extranet

jLibrary includes a web application that allows access to repositories information through any standard web browser.

In this scenario, you wish offer access to your information to some users that don't have installed the jLibrary application in their computers. Examples of this could be clients, providers, people not related to your enterprise, etc.

Thanks to the included web application , you can have your centralized server within your intranet, and at the same time offer access to third paries through a web browser. This web application, allows only read-only access to the information, so there is no danger of information damage and malevolous access. The web application, also can be installed in an independent server, obtaining in this way the most scalability.