I'm currently working on a project that involves moving a database of documents for court records and briefs over to a Drupal environment. One of the problems that we are faced with is how to index these documents.

In our court district, records and briefs all have a docket number which is assigned to a case. The interesting thing is that when multiple cases merge the docket numbers associated to the case become synonymous:

> 
> **Case 1**, documents have **Doceket No. A**
> 
> 
> **Case 2**, documents have **Docket No. B**
> 
> 
> If case **Cases 1** and **Case 2** merge, then **Docket No. A** = **Docket No. B**
> 
> 
> 

My first inclination is to create a **Docket Vocabulary** and have the terms of this Taxonomy be the docket numbers. I am hoping to take advantage of the fact that terms can be synonymous.

I understand that there are several functions in the Taxonomy module that I may be able to take advantage of, including:

```
taxonomy_get_synonyms
taxonomy_get_related

```

But I'm having problems convincing my colleagues that this is the way to go, and frankly I'm not certain it's the right solution either. (Though one advantage I think is likely is that using Taxonomy in this way means we could take advantage of other taxonomy manipulating modules down the line).

If anyone has had a similar issue and can offer some guidance as to how to move forward, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

D

I've asked a related question (which I would also need to answer in order to move forward with this solution):

[Can Drupal terms in different Taxonomies be synonymous?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2656247/can-drupal-terms-in-different-taxonomies-be-synonymous)