This paper explores the potential of augmenting property-based document management systems with user-specific, active properties that carry executable code, providing document-based services. It proposes a new paradigm for document management infrastructures that combines document properties as a uniform management mechanism with active properties for delivering document services. The Placeless Documents system, an experimental prototype, demonstrates this approach. The paper presents the fundamental design, explores challenges and opportunities, and illustrates how the architecture addresses these aspects, offering insights into future document management systems.
Published in ACM Transactions on Information Systems, this paper aligns with the journal's focus on innovative information systems and technologies. By exploring the extension of document management systems with active properties, the study contributes to the journal's scope of advancing the design and development of effective and user-centric information systems.