Storing documents by lifecyle phases

In a business partner meeting (always an excellent source for blog ideas) in Beijing an interesting question popped up: "How should I split a (Domino) database if it gets really huge". The usual approaches are to split them along location or department lines. However in the discussion an interesting alternative approach emerged:

Document go through 4 phases:

1. Draft: the document gets created but is not complete yet. Very often that state is neglected by Stalinist validation code.
2. Current: The document runs through a workflow and people actively work with it, changing it often (e.g. add approvals)
3. Historic: The document reached its final form and does not change any more. The document is still relevant and is looked at (often)
4. Old: Nobody cares for the document any more, but you want to keep it for compliance or forensic reasons

From 1-4 the frequency of updates is declining while the number of documents is increasing. So splitting these documents into 3-4 different databases can make sense. In a XPage (or Dojo) application you can unify the display of these data easily. Food for your thoughts.