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"Book Purchase" Function in a Documentation Self-service at the EDF (Electricité de France) Research and Development Division

Clamart

Electricité de France

France

Jolly, Véronique

Véronique Jolly

Research Engineer

Electricité de France 1 avenue du Général de Gaulle
Clamart France F-92141
Phone: + 33 1 47 65 31 48
Fax: + 33 1 47 65 31 24
Email: veronique.jolly@edf.fr Web: www.edf.fr

Biographical notice:

Véronique Jolly is a computer engineer. She graduated from the CNAM (Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers) . She has been working on scientific and technical documentation with SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and Hytime (Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language) since 1993. Her work includes the design of models, the conversion of office documents into structured format and the development of electronic books. She is responsible for collecting and publishing on Intranet information c ncerning the EDF Research and Development Division. She is also studying XML (eXtensible Markup Language) as an exchange format for electronic data needed by the Documentation Center (supplying of data bases, contact with suppliers).

ABSTRACT:

The Research and Development Division of EDF has developed an Intranet system to give access to technical documentation. One of its many functions is the overall management of book purchases. With this fun tion, end-users can directly place orders, a supervisory control team checks and completes the orders, and a supplier carries out each transaction in contact with bookshops and suppliers. This is accomplished through the use of an XML model for the data exchange, which improves production and service quality with minimal effort.

GALAXIE (EDF Documentation Intranet server)

The EDF Research and Development Division has developed the GALAXIE Intranet server, which provides access to technical documentation. Using an internal data base where around 700 000 references a e stored , it allows searching for books, articles and technical memos. The documents can be viewed, borrowed and/or reproduced. Other services are also offered: orientation maps help users to locate Internet servers on specific subjects (e ectric vehicles for example), automatic press reviews are made according to customized profiles from journals which are available on the Web (recent developments in combined cycles for example).

Book Purchase Service

Moreover, books can be ordered by simply filling in a form. 2500 people use this service each year to buy approximately 4000 documents and 2000 theses, standards and activity reports. 2 people, known as the BPS (Book Purchase Service) team , are in charge of collecting forms, checking and completing the description of the document. The result is transmitted to a supplier who has been contracted to make all transactions with bookshops and publishers: finding the best prices at shortest delivery times, transmitting orders, receiving the documents, making daily deliveries and publishing monthly invoices. In normal cases, the document are deliver d within 3 to 10 days after the order was made. In the following cases, the supplier must get in contact with the BPS team and arrive at a solution in order to satisfy the end user's requirements: the document is out of s ock or out of print, the ! requested delivery date cannot be met, the price is above a predefined threshold.

In the GALAXIE system, the BPS team is considered as a professional user (see figureJOL-003 ).

General architecture of the system

This service provides real added value for users.

The user does not need to know all the references of the document (title, author, publisher, publication date,etc). For example, a form may carry the description "XML Europe '99 Conference Proceedings". The BPS team is then responsible for knowing where the document is referenced, for example on the GCA (Graphic Communications Association) Web server. The user isn't required to provide c mplete personal details since, following authentification in the system, all information concerning the user's identification and address is stored in the GALAXIE data base. Finally, the user does not have to worry about he practical details of delivery and invoicing.

This service enables the company to have a single supplier with whom a contract is made. Each year, potential suppliers are compared. According to the volume of documents ordered, prices and delivery times can be renegotiated and cond tions improved. Internally, invoicing is simplified since a single operation is made each month with the same outside company and a single payment. Reinvoicing of EDF users is carried out only by the Documentation Center.

Information exchange with XML

Up to 1998, all exchanges of information with the supplier were paper-based: requests, order receipts, delivery notes and invoices. Each document sent to EDF required checking, followed by manual entering of the de ails into the transaction history data base.

With an overall objective of reducing costs while preserving or improving the quality of service, the BPS team had to find ways of saving time:

Faster treatment of straightforward cases which consist principally of verification,
More time allocated to complex orders where a document search must be made or in cases where discussion with the supplier and/or the client is necessary,

With this in mind, exchanges of data between the BPS team and the supplier will be made in XML format, in accordance with a very simple model. Each event, such as a user request or the confirmati n of the order by the supplier, generates an XML fragment corresponding to this model (see figureJOL-005 ).

XML exchanges with the supplier

Initially, it has been decided to exchange one file per day by e-mail. EDF sends the supplier a file of the requests with the information supplied by the client, completed by the BPS team and da a from the GALAXIE data base. The supplier then sends EDF a file with an acknowledgement of the orders corresponding to the requests and the delivery notes given to the clients on that particular day. T is file is then validated by a parser before being loaded into the transaction data base. Several checks are then made: does the order correspond to the request, was the delivery made on time, does the invoice correspond to the delivered do uments? As much as possible, follow-up of a request is automatic, with only the anomalies being indicated.

Taking advantage of XML

A model has been developed for the principal transactions (see figureJOL-007 ): requests, orders, deliveries, invoices. It contains around 30 leaf elements which correspond to the information in the dat base. It is structured on 4 levels, with particular attention being paid to legibility and upgradeability.

The XML model and an instance

We have taken advantage of all basic XML features:

Tags are better adapted to this type of 'literary' information than delimited flat files where some data, titles for example, can be long;
The tree structure avoids repetition of the same information, for example in the case of several deliveries for one order;
Minor modifications of the model will not affect the overall chain, when working with a new supplier for example;

All levels of validation are or will be used:

Control of syntax ensures that the document is well formed;
Conformity to the model ensures that the order of elements and the presence of mandatory elements is respected;

Verification of the type and length of the data before they are fed into the data base will be made with the formal representation of the database diagram with XML-Data (XML-Data) or DCD (Document Content Description for XML) ;

The model can serve as a basis for a three-tier architecture. From now on, development of the application will focus increasingly on e-commerce: access to on-line bookshop/publisher catalogues, orders sent directly to the supplier electronic data interchange at each transaction, automatic recording of the transaction in the GALAXIE history data base (figureJOL-008 ).). Although a prototype has already been developed, it is not yet operational.

Target architecture

With the current solution, no modifications have been made to the computer environment of the two parts.

EDF uses SUN (SUN microsystems) workstations running on SOLARIS with the Oracle data base to store transaction histories. Validation is carried out w th the AIS (Advanced Information Systems) Balise parser. SQL (Standard Query Language) requests enable the information to be extracted. Loading is carried out using a Balise program which generates SQL orders. The supplier uses COBOL programs and indexed VISION files on a DIGITAL ALPHA server running on OSF (Open Software Foundation) Unix.

Conclusion

The EDF Research and Development Division is also experimenting with XML in other fields; scientific and technical documentation for example. Other X specifications ( XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) , MathML (Mathematical Markup Language) , Xlink (XML Linking Language) ,...) and associated tools have been tested in order to improve the representation of hypertext links and mathematical equations.

On the contrary, the "Document purchase" function is not a technical break-through; it simply demonstrates that XML can be useful in a specific function in a large application:

A simple model can be developed rapidly,
Implementation adapts to the existing computer environment and does not necessarily require specific tools,
This type of exchange provides a base for future innovations.

Thanks to XML , the initial objectives will be attained: to save time and improve the quality of the service while keeping technical effort and financial investment to a minimum.


Information and Content Exchange		Table of contents		Indexes		extended Structured Query Language (xSQL)