VIRTUAL DOCUMENTS GENERATED VIA COMBINED DOCUMENTS OR PORTIONS OF DOCUMENTS RETRIEVED FROM DATA REPOSITORIES

A virtual document generated within the environment of a document management system. The document management system provides for the separation of the document content from properties which describe the content. Bit providers are implemented to retrieve the content for a document in a manner such that the document is unaware of the location of the content which is retrieved. Generation of a virtual document recognizes that a one-to-one correlation between a document and the contents which make up that document are not required. Therefore, content for a single DMS document may be dispersed across numerous storage repositories. Alternatively, a virtual document may be a sub-portion of a file on a single repository, or a combination of such contents.