Enjoying the solution ideas. And if you don't mind me with additional foods for thought...

References are fine within an entity, as there's control and knowledge over it's availability and existence. But linking in any other case, I'm gunna balk.

It's all good and fine when all linked systems are up and behaving, but one broken or unavailable reference can degrade validity quick. If every document or info isn't available 100% perfectly all the time 24x7x365, else there's that inevitable finger pointing shootout scene, when there's data that needs to be produced and it's either incomplete or late. Other people's / department's / company's systems ALWAYS go down when you need them most - that I learned from trading... nah, it's always been true.

However, federate it into "one place" and you have reproducable results and control over the data, even if transient. 100 million documents.. decent sized, doable.

I prolly sound jaded, but having been called into meetings and seeing Bob blaming remote Jane blaming remote Sally, ad infinitum, gets old fast. I've personally witnessed it in airlines, electrical grid systems, all the way down to daycare, schooling, local govts...

None of the DMs do the job well enough? At 100 million documents I wouldn't suggest a third party solution - coder up.. way cheaper, faster and functionality out the wazoo.