1. An apparatus comprising: at least one processor; a memory coupled to the at least one processor; and a content management system residing in the memory and executed by the at least one processor, the content management system managing a plurality of documents in a repository, the content management system comprising: an autonomic structure generation mechanism that detects when the content management system processes a synchronization rule for a document, the synchronization rule governing synchronization between content in the document and metadata related to the content in the document, the synchronization rule specifying structure that does not exist in the document, the autonomic structure generation mechanism autonomically generating in the document at least a portion of the specified structure that does not exist and autonomically populating with data at least one autonomically-generated structure in the document; and an autonomic structure policy that specifies at least one criterion that determines how the autonomic structure generation mechanism generates the portion of the specified structure that does not exist.