by Dan Dube, Senior Manager, Site Support, Xyvision, Inc.

Over the last two years, document management has moved to the forefront of the "Information Revolution." Document management systems provide careful control of revisions, easy access to documents for research, efficient storage of information that is used repeatedly, and more. Xyvision is a pioneer and a leader on this front, developing its own software: Parlance Document Manager (PDM).

Document management systems often involve a migration to SGML as well. After all, a system that knows about the content of a document is certainly going to facilitate managing that document. SGML is a key component of Xyvision's approach to document management. In fact, many of its projects involve moving to document management and SGML at the same time.

Xyvision recommends the services of DCL to their customers facing conversion of legacy data to SGML. As well as being a conversion specialist, DCL also has tremendous SGML experience. And, because the goal of loading this information into PDM's database is known from the beginning, DCL can convert documents "intelligently." Some examples:

• PDM handles document data as "building blocks," or modules that are typically smaller than a document. DCL can break down the information during conversion. SGML was designed for this kind of document organization.
  

   

• Because SGML is a metalanguage, i.e., a language that can be customized, a Document Type Definition (DTD) can be created with tags that correspond to the properties and attributes managed by PDM.
  

   

• Xyvision often has customers that need to maintain their documents in loose-leaf format. Revisions to these documents should affect as few pages as possible. The easiest way to do this is to tag each page, which DCL can do efficiently with SGML.
  

   

For more information on Xyvision document management software and consulting services, contact Dan Dube at 617/245-41090, ext. 4100.