A DMS is needed to replace the current "Files" tool within Moodle, so that:

 files can be stored in the database (rather than just on disk as now)
 files can have metadata attached to them (eg keywords, description etc)
 files can be searched for text inside them, or by metadata
 files can have versions (and records of past versions)
 files can have particular authors (and perhaps multiple authors)
 files can have access controls applied to them
 files can be shared between courses
 all users can have their own online files area
 all users can have quotas applied (so students don't start MP3 archives)
 all files in a user's file area will be available for use in quizzes, forum attachments,
journals, assignments, etc

There are other niceties such as WebDAV access but this list would go a long way (and OWL
goes a long way towards it).

(http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=4380)

Document management focuses on the storage and organization of documents to support active
work in progress, including content creation and sharing within an organization. When
organizations do not have any kind of formal document management system in place, content is
often created and saved in an unmanaged and decentralized way on scattered file shares and
individual hard disk drives. This makes it hard for employees to find, share, and collaborate
effectively on content. This also makes it difficult for organizations to use the valuable business
information and data in the content.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports your organization's document management
needs by providing a broad set of document management capabilities that enable you to do the
following:

 Store, organize, and locate documents.

 Ensure the consistency of documents.
 Manage metadata for documents.
 Help protect documents from unauthorized access or use.
 Ensure consistent business processes (workflows) for how documents are handled.

 Note   This article refers to an example SharePoint site created by Adventure Works, a fictitious
company that manufactures bicycles, bicycle components, and bicycling accessories.

For example, the Technical Documentation team at Adventure Works, which produces customer-
facing publications such as user manuals and product specification sheets, uses many of the
document management features in Office SharePoint Server 2007. The team stores all of the
content that it creates in a site that was created from the Document Center site template. In their
Document Center site, the team members use major and minor versioning to track the
development of documents through versions. They also use required check-out to ensure that
team members do not inadvertently overwrite one another's work.

Store and organize documents in a Document Center site

The Document Center site template included with Office SharePoint Server 2007 can be used to
create sites that are optimized for creating, using, and storing large numbers of documents. Sites
that are created from the Document Center site template have specialized document management
features such as required check-out and major-and-minor document versioning, which are turned
on by default. Required check-out helps prevent conflicts and confusion over changes, because
only one user can change a file at a given time. Versioning allows you to track changes to
documents, and it helps you manage content as you revise it. Versioning is especially helpful
when several people work together on projects, or when information goes through several stages
of development and review.

Use content types to manage documents consistently

A content type is a group of reusable settings that describe the shared behaviors for a specific
type of content. Content types enable organizations to organize, manage, and handle content in a
consistent way across a site collection. You can define a content type for each type of document
or information product that your organization creates to ensure that these different types of
documents are handled in a consistent way.

For example, the Technical Documentation department at Adventure Works created two content
types called User Manual and Product Specification. When team members go to the Document
Center to create a new document, each of these content types appears as an option on the New
button in the document library. Each content type specifies its own template, so that all user
manuals and product specifications share a common format. Each content type also specifies its
own custom columns, so that, for example, all user manuals contain metadata about which
product models the manuals apply to. Each content type even contains its own workflows, so that
the team can be confident that every user manual follows the same feedback and approval
processes. And because product specifications are contained in a different content type, those
documents can follow different processes and have columns that require different metadata.

Manage document properties

One of the primary ways that people find information that is saved on a Web site or in a
document management system is by browsing or searching for the metadata (document
properties) that is saved along with files. However, employees in organizations often do not take
the time to add or update the document properties for files when they save them.

The programs and servers available in the 2007 Microsoft Office system help people to create
and update metadata for documents. When you open or edit a document that is saved to an Office
SharePoint Server 2007 site in a 2007 Office release desktop program, such as Word, Excel, or
PowerPoint, you can edit the server properties for that document in the Document Information
Panel that appears at the top of the file. If custom columns are added to the content type for that
document or to the library where that document is saved, these column values are displayed as
property fields in the Document Information Panel. By integrating the document-property editing
experience into the content editing experience, the programs in the 2007 Office release make it
easy for organizations to improve the quality of the metadata for their content.

Additionally, organizations can use Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 to create customized
Document Information Panels that they can then add to specific content types.

Help protect documents

Office SharePoint Server 2007 also offers several ways for organizations to help protect
documents that are saved to a SharePoint site from unauthorized access or use. Organizations can
apply Information Rights Management (IRM) to an entire document library to protect an entire
set of documents. IRM enables you to limit the actions that users can take on files that are
downloaded from SharePoint lists or libraries. IRM encrypts the downloaded files and limits the
set of users and programs that are allowed to decrypt these files. IRM can also limit the rights of
the users who are allowed to read files, so that they cannot take actions such as printing copies of
the files or copying text from them. IRM can thus help your organization to enforce corporate
policies that govern the control and dissemination of confidential or proprietary information.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 also enables you to protect files in other ways. If you want to
prevent people from reading drafts of documents in progress, you can set up a document library
with major and minor versioning and then specify which groups of people are allowed to read
minor versions (drafts). Drafts are the minor versions of files or list items that are not yet
approved as major. If you set up that library to require content approval, then drafts are not
published as major versions until someone with the appropriate permissions approves the
document for publication as a major draft.

Another way you can help protect documents is by configuring permissions for individual
folders, list items, or documents. If there are only one or two files in a document library to which
you want to restrict access, you can edit the permissions for these individual items to change who
has the permission to view or edit them.

Manage document-related processes with workflows

To support common document-related business processes, Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers
built-in workflows that organizations can use to manage tasks such as document review,
approval, and signature collection. Workflow is defined as the automated movement of
documents or items through a sequence of actions or tasks that are related to a business process.
Workflows help organizations manage document-related business processes more efficiently,
because they automatically track and manage the human tasks involved in these processes.

For example, the Technical Documentation team at Adventure Works makes extensive use of the
Collect Feedback workflow. Instead of sending e-mail to reviewers, a writer can start a workflow
on the current document right from Office Word 2007. The workflow takes care of managing the
process, including sending notification messages to reviewers, creating tasks for them, and
tracking the status of those tasks. Reviewers can complete their tasks in Word 2007 or in
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.

Additionally, by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 or Microsoft Visual Studio
2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation, organizations can develop and deploy
custom workflows that manage business processes that are unique to their organizations.

(http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/introduction-to-document-management-
HA010241399.aspx)