A Securable Autonomous Generalised Document Model (SAGENT)

A generalised modelling system for handling multimedia documents is introduced capable of allowing documents authored in differing formats to be efficiently manipulated, compared and analysed. The model represents a document as a secure autonomous object possessing the ability to represent and modify its own meta data whilst not compromising the ideals of maintaining the autonomy of individual document components. The paper presents the model by means of a case study of the existing prototype implementation followed by the detailed presentation of the implementation of the model using Object-Oriented technology showing how the model is able to address the key issues of security, generality and autonomy.