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So Who Needs XML?

If you're looking for dramatic improvements in your information publishing operation, a new system based on XML may be the answer, writes Don Bridges (pictured), Account Manager for Technical Documents at DCL.

Every organization - commercial and non-commercial - faces the same competitive pressures that are changing the face of business worldwide: How to produce a greater variety of products, continue to improve quality, accelerate time-to-market, and maintain or reduce costs.

Organizations that produce customer and service information face the same challenges: how can we efficiently, accurately, and quickly deliver our information on paper, on CD-ROM and on the World Wide Web? How can we streamline our processes, improve our authors' productivity, reduce redundant work, and eliminate tasks that add little or no value? How can we protect our information from hardware and software obsolescence?

If you're looking for dramatic improvements in your information publishing operation, a new publishing system based on XML may be the answer. Typical indicators of organizations ripe for an XML solution include:

• Valuable document information: Organizations that distribute information of great value primarily include publishers of technical, medical, legal, or business data, and manufacturers of complex products whose operating and service manuals represent vital companions to the products themselves. These organizations invest heavily in the creation and distribution of information that their customers consider crucial. As a result, these organizations stand to benefit the most from products that can increase the accuracy, timeliness, and flexibility of their information while reducing the cost of its creation and maintenance.

• Multiple output formats: XML is format-independent and, in a robust application, can easily generate multiple outputs, such as printed documentation, field service update bulletins, CD-ROM distribution, online (e.g., Internet) delivery, on-demand printing, help files, and machine-readable data.

• Storage over substantial lengths of time: New generations of computer hardware and software now appear every 18 months. When an organization must manage information over a period of decades, the hardware and software that were used to create the information will be long obsolete while the information itself is still useful. XML is hardware - and software - independent.

• Multiple sources of information: When information must be collected from multiple sources, the effort to integrate the information is substantially less if all sources use a common format rather than a number of differing formats. XML provides a standard common format for multiple sources of information.

• Multiple points of review before information is approved: Information that has not been reviewed and approved is qualitatively different than information that has been reviewed and approved, even if the review does not change any of the information. The different reviews become part of the information, especially if product liability is a factor.

• Conditional information: If the information in a document varies depending on factors external to the information, such as service instructions that vary according to the weather, a correct presentation of information needs to account for those factors. XML provides a means to identify information that is variable and to control the presentation of the information based on external conditions.

If you have most of the conditions listed above, the benefits of XML will likely outweigh the cost of an implementation. The next step is to understand and quantify the benefits and costs of an XML system.

Lastly, a special thanks to PTC (Arbortext) for their assistance with this article.

Don Bridges
Account Manager for Technical Documents
Data Conversion Laboratory

To discover more about how XML can benefit your business, contact DCL on (800) 321-2816 x267 or e-mail us at sales@dclab.com.

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