Introduction

In the course of working out the requirements for an open document format, it soon turned out that for administrations and economical enterprises an unhindered feeding in and processing of electronic documents into workflow and document management systems is especially important, beside the documents exchange without spoiling the format. This should include the whole chain of processes, organization-spreading if necessary , from the drawing up of a document to its archiving.

In this context, XML appears to be a suitable base technology because the use of XML schemas opens up the possibility to define extensible meta information.

This characteristic is particularly significant because it allows to define a hierarchical system of document classes, starting from a formless base document like a notice up to more complex documents as income-tax returns for instance.

With regard to their proper filing, their feeding in into a document management system or their processing supported by a workflow system, documents need certain accompanying information which relates them to the context they have been created or are processed in.

Basic information related to each document is for instance:

	document class (letter, invoice, delivery note, tax return)
	name of autor
	creation date
	version
	accessibility

In addition to the above mentioned basics, a formless letter might contain the following items:

	name of sender
	name of recipient
	address of sender
	address of recipient
	reference code of sender
	reference code of recipient
	subject
	reference

From the above mentioned formless letter a business letter could be derived, which would contain additional information such as bank accounts, media etc.

From this business letter again, documents such as offers, delivery notes, invoices and orders could be derived, and so on....

Which contents must be included in which document classes can and should be gathered from already existent specifications. These are

	DOMEA-specifications for governmental administrations (Germany)
	and contents defined for given EDIFACT-informationfor instance, in the field of economy.

Following this approach, a hierarchical system of document classes will result which, starting from a 1dok basic document, will be interdependent in various developments.

1dok.org therefore proposes an "extensible hierarchical meta data model". A crucial advantage offered by the 1dok meta data model would be the possibility to choose the "optimal communication track" each time within a given communicative situation.