CMS and DMS Differences
There is considerable confusion on the difference between document management systems (DMS) and content management systems (CMS). This has not been helped by the vendors, who are keen to market their products as widely as possible. These two types of systems are very different, and serve complementary needs. While there is an ongoing move to merge the two together (a positive step), it is important to understand when each system is appropriate.
Document management systems (DMS)
Document management is certainly the older discipline, born out of the need to manage huge numbers of documents in organizations.
Mature and well-tested, document management systems can be characterized as follows:
focused on managing documents, in the traditional sense (like Word files)
each unit of information (document) is fairly large, and self-contained
there are few (if any) links between documents
provides limited integration with repository (check-in, check-out, etc)
focused primarily on storage and archiving
includes powerful workflow
targeted at storing and presenting documents in their native format
limited web publishing engine typically produces one page for each document
This is just a generalized description of a DMS, with most systems offering a range of unique features and capabilities. Nonetheless, this does provide a representative outline of common DMS functionality.
Content management systems (CMS)
Content management is more recent, and is primarily designed to meet the growing needs of the website and intranet markets. A content management system can be summarized as follows:
manages small, interconnected units of information (eg. web pages)
each unit (page) is defined by its location on the site
extensive cross-linking between pages
focused primarily on page creation and editing
provides tight integration between authoring and the repository (metadata, etc)
provides a very powerful publishing engine (templates, scripting, etc)
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Web based document management software
Document Management system feature list