2.1 Understanding Applications

Applications are the core of Oracle I/PM. Consider an application as a type of management container for documents. You select an application to use when uploading documents to Oracle I/PM and that application determines what information, or metadata, is associated with the uploaded document. The associated metadata may be visible to you and require you to input information into a form, such as entering an invoice number for the document, or the metadata may be invisible to you, such as the security permissions required to retrieve the document. Each application has a different set of metadata, called a definition, which is determined by the person creating the application. An application definition is used to:

• Assign permissions: applications determine what security permissions are appropriate to access uploaded documents.

• Define indexing options: applications determine what information associated with a document is indexed and made available for searching.

• Set storage policy: applications determine how a document is handled in a repository and when it is archived.

• Define storage location and rules: applications determine the physical location of a document.

• Specify Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) processes to initiate as part of the document workflow: applications are used to manage interaction with other business systems to integrate documents with standard business processes.