A novel strategy for the representation and manipulation of distributed documents, potentially complex and heterogeneous, is presented in this paper. The document under the proposed model is represented in a hierarchical structure. Associated ?metadata? describes the flexible hierarchy with the scope of dynamically restructuring the tree at runtime. All useful functionals can also be included within the hierarchy to minimize reliance on external programs in manipulating sensitive data. This gives the proposed model two key properties: generality (capable of representing any document format including future innovations) and autonomy (non-reliance on external programs). The model also allows incorporation of additional features for security and access control. Biometric person authentication measures are introduced. A brief example illustrates the key ideas.