Someone I know (really, it's not me) has a boss who doesn't understand the difference between data, a record, a database field, and a document. He's asked me to have Laserfiche perform retention policy on not just documents, but also database fields in the database of third-party software.
I've explained that Laserfiche performs retention on documents that are associated with metadata in the Laserfiche database. I've also explained that having Laserfiche delete rows of records in software would certainly break that software, because usually software is designed in such a way that multiple tables and views would be affected (via foreign keys, calculated fields, shared data, Linked Server connections, etc.) and that designing a system such as this is a flawed concept.
The gist of what I want to say (to my friend's boss, not my super awesome boss) is that Laserfiche is part of a data management system, specifically the component that deals with documents. Other sister systems would need to manage data in databases, if such a system could even be designed without compromising software integrity.
If anyone has a way of articulating what an ECM is and isn't, please help. An official Laserfiche explanation of how Laserfiche should be used and should not be used would be wonderful. If you think I'm off base on this let me know. I'm a software developer and systems integrator, so I have my biases.
Thanks much.