Metadata wrapping

Managing e-mail, Microsoft Office documents, industrial drawings, image files and Web documents is easy when you have a few. But as the number of digital documents you store increases, your ability to understand or manage those documents decreases, according to Robert Yonaitis, founder and CEO of HiSoftware.

His company has tackled that dilemma by developing software that embeds documents in a metadata wrapper. Metadata elements provide information about data and documents in a way that is similar to the way library catalogs provide information about books. Wrapping the documents in XML or HTML allows fielded searching of all document types. The packaged documents can be indexed and retrieved via common index servers or search engines.

HiSoftware describes itself as a "knowledge management company" because its products simplify the process of indexing, cataloging and retrieving internal documents for organizations that want to leverage their information resources.

According to Yonaitis, HiSoftware's new product, MetaPackager, is the only solution that provides both the original document and the rich metadata that allows field search in a container that can be indexed and distributed easily. That is important because when you view a document, the visual properties can be as important as the text in determining its meaning. Document attributes such as bold, font types, italic and colors, for example, provide a complete snapshot of a document and better understanding of the author's meaning at the time of creation.

MetaPackager is scheduled to be released at the end of the month.