XML-Empowered Content Management and Delivery

For years, vendors, standards organizations and industry analysts have promoted the use of XML and component-oriented content management. Despite compelling success stories and proven return on investment, the rate of adoption and growth has been slower than anticipated.

But the market is now poised for dramatic change and growth, based on a confluence of powerful business drivers, new technology and emerging XML standards. If you are still using traditional document-based approaches to create and deliver dynamic technical or commercial content, it is time to take a serious look at a new generation of XML-based solutions and best practices.

What’s Old is New Again

As far back as 1990, visionary companies such as Sikorsky Aircraft put into production component-based, structured content management and publishing systems. The goal was simple: apply the lessons learned in manufacturing complex helicopters to all the technical content that supports them. Think “components” not “documents.” Dynamically assemble pertinent content against a bill of materials... share and reuse content across product lines and publications... reduce redundant, reiterative authoring and update cycles. Think “just-in-time” delivery for technical information. Sikorsky demonstrated the time and cost savings and quality and accuracy improvements from such an approach more than 15 years ago and they continue to benefit from them today.

Other companies embraced this approach, but until recently it was primarily the largest and most complex environments that invested in the data modeling, content management systems (CMS) and cultural and process changes necessary to succeed.

We are seeing a recent and significant change, as challenges and complexity are now impacting mid-size and even smaller organizations.

Publish or Perish

Creating, maintaining and delivering accurate content has never been more challenging. Product and information lifecycles are increasingly dynamic. Updates and revisions that were once scheduled in years now happen monthly or even weekly. Global markets require multilingual content to be delivered concurrently with English versions and, in some cases, before the English versions. Multi-channel delivery—print, electronic and Web simultaneously—is now the norm.

While most enterprises agree that these pressures exist, few are willing to increase staff to address these new challenges. The result? “Do more with less,” while the potential cost and revenue impact of late delivery or inaccurate information has never been higher. The old adage “publish or perish,” once reserved for academics, now eerily applies to almost any organization.

These business drivers (with translation costs typically taking the lead) require that organizations rethink their authoring, content management and publishing processes. To remain competitive, an increasing number of companies are turning to component-based CMS technology and XML.

A New Generation of XML Standards

XML has demonstrated significant value for those who have embraced it. Until recently, most organizations developed proprietary document type definitions (DTDs) or schemas tailored to their specific needs or the needs of selected business partners. Using XML, component-based authoring and CMS systems, organizations were able to share and reuse information and more easily transform XML data to print, electronic and Web-based outputs. The implementation process, however, was complex and time-consuming. Developing a DTD required data modeling, and determining the appropriate level of granularity could be challenging. Developing and maintaining the transformations for multi-channel output was also costly. In addition, since the DTD was developed in-house, the goal of easily sharing and exchanging data externally often fell short because business and industry partners were unlikely to use the same DTD. Where industry-standard or government DTDs did exist, they were not always adopted; if they were adopted, they were often modified to accommodate unique internal needs.

Fortunately, a new generation of XML standards has emerged that provides a comprehensive environment for moving to XML—including a well-defined DTD or schema.

Welcome to DITA and S1000D

DITA—the Darwin Information Typing Architecture—is an XML standard, originally promulgated by IBM, that is accelerating the rate of XML adoption worldwide. Think of DITA as a complete XML starter kit which provides tools as well as best practices to help you hit the ground running. The DTD is provided so you don’t have to create your own, and the level of granularity for managing components of information is prescribed based largely around “topics.”

DITA also anticipates the need for the standard to evolve—hence the Darwin angle—and provides a specific mechanism called “specialization” for accommodating such changes. Industry work groups are now developing specializations for specific industries to ensure data interoperability and exchange. By defining the mark-up, granularity and even the mechanisms for collecting and exchanging content, DITA goes beyond prior standards.

DITA is an open standard in the public domain, and is officially supported by OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, an independent standards body. Adopters and developers have contributed to its development and ongoing evolution. Vendors (such as XyEnterprise) are submitting enhancements and extensions to DITA, improving the standard and its related components. A prime example is the DITA Open Toolkit which is available to all, and
includes a powerful set of software transformations that automatically convert DITA-structured content to a variety of output formats including XSL-FO for print and PDF rendering, HTML for Web delivery and compiled help formats for embedded or online help delivery.

In addition to technology, many best practices are supported by using DITA, including minimalistic authoring and consistency of terminology. Component-based authoring and consistent authoring styles provide the foundation for significant savings in language translation, particularly when combined with computer-aided or automated language translation technologies.

A similarly prescriptive XML environment—S1000D—is gaining increased adoption in defense-related and commercial applications. Though the terminology is different (e.g. “data modules” instead of “topics” and “publication modules” versus DITA “maps”), the potential returns on investment are very similar.

Look Into the Future

The rapid adoption of XML, DITA and S1000D represent a significant evolution in how people approach the publishing process, but there are even greater changes on the
horizon. Companies are exploring new and richer forms of electronic content delivery. Leveraging XML intelligent graphic forms such as SVG, CAD-related standards like CGM and multimedia capabilities such as Flash graphics, animations and videos, companies are exploring ways to enrich the user experience. PDF support for multimedia is one sign of this change, but the format is still essentially page-based. Rich-media platforms now use powerful database technology that supports XML natively, delivering a wide array of graphic formats, and using embedded intelligence to serve up the appropriate content dynamically.

For instance, rather than a table of contents or standard text search, users will be able to ask questions or describe symptoms or problems and be presented with only the specific content that pertains to their requests. Animations will show step-by-step installation or assembly procedures that can convey far more than text descriptions and have the added benefit of being globally applicable. For diagnostics and troubleshooting, these devices will be able to connect to the PC, automobile or appliance that has a problem and be intelligently guided based on the error codes reported by the device. The potential is enormous; and user expectations of interactivity and graphic richness are rising steadily as the Web has changed everyone’s perception about dynamic content delivery.

A Road Map for Success

With more than 15 years experience in publishing and structured content management, XyEnterprise has implemented solutions for some of the most demanding environments in a wide variety of industries including aerospace and defense, legal publishing and hardware and software technology companies. From this vantage point we have evangelized for XML (and back in the day, SGML), promoted component management versus document management and demonstrated the cost savings of highly automated publishing. We are encouraged by the significant increase in the number of companies that are adopting and embracing the best practices we have long promoted.

The compelling business challenges in today’s global market demand that companies rethink their content development and delivery strategies to remain competitive. Moving away from the traditional document-based publishing processes, embracing XML, leveraging component-based authoring and deploying automated CMS and publishing technologies can substantially reduce costs and improve accuracy and turnaround time. If you are considering such a move, the time has never been better and the tools and environments available have never been richer. Looking forward, new technologies and delivery platforms will create new opportunities for forward thinking companies to interact with their customers. These are indeed exciting times.

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