Widely distributed digital printing   Table of contents   Indexes   Electronic book conversion and manufacturing using embedded tagging tools
 Management 
 Model 
Production
 Systems 
 XML 
 

XML-based IFRAtrack

 the glue for integration in business-wide media workflow management systems
Hedin, Björn
 
 Björn  Hedin
 Research Scientist
 Dept. of Media Technoology and Graphic Arts, KTH
 Stockholm 
 Sweden 
Dept. of Media Technoology and Graphic Arts, KTH,  Drottning Kristinas väg 47
Stockholm   SE-10044 Sweden
Phone: +46 8 790 69 90 Fax: +46 8 791 87 93 email: bjornh@gt.kth.se web site: www.gt.kth.se
 Biography
 Björn Hedin — Björn Hedin has a background in Computer Science at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden and philosophy at Stockholm University. He has been a researcher and a teacher at the Department of Media Technology and Graphic Arts at KTH since 1995. He has been working part time at MWM Media Workflow Management AB since 1998. His research is focused on production and workflow management in publishing, and he has been involved in developing the IFRAtrack standard since 1995.
Fällström, Fredrik
 
 Fredrik  Fällström
  MWM Media Workflow Management AB 
 Stockholm 
 Sweden 
MWM Media Workflow Management AB,  Stockholm  Sweden email: fredrik.fallstrom@mwm.se
 Biography
 Fredrik F Fällström — Fredrik F Fällström a background in Computer Science at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been involved in research projects at the Department of Media Technology and Graphic Arts at KTH since 1994. He has had a leading role as a technical expert in the IFRAtrack Working Group since 1995. Currently he is working at MWM Media Workflow Management AB, a company focused on production and workflow management in publishing.
Löffler, Harald
 
 Harald  Löffler
  Darmstadt  
 Germany 
Ifra, the association for newspaper and media technology
Ifra, the association for newspaper and media technology,  Darmstadt  Germany email: loeffler@ifra.com
 Biography
 Harald Löffler — Harald Löffler holds a university diploma of Mathematics. Since October 1997 he is working as Consult Manager for Ifra, the world's leading association for newspaper and media technology. Harald Löffler is Secretary for Ifra's Information Processing Committee and for the working group for IFRAtrack 3.0. His focus lies on consultancy for integrated publishing systems and organisation within the editorial, advertising and production departments. After university he started as a trainee in the IT-department of ESSO AG in Hamburg and after three years he entered the publishing industry as system engineer and software developer for Atex, one of the leading suppliers for editorial and advertising systems at that time. During his career he worked for a few vendors like System Integrators Inc, Mediasystemen, Open Press Consulting (OPC) as well as for publishing companies like Axel Springer Verlag and Gruner & Jahr. One of the most challenging projects was the implementation of a CCI layout and pagination system in conjunction with the development of a bi-directional interface to the Sii editorial system for "Die Welt" in Berlin.
Nordqvist, Stig
 
 Stig  Nordqvist
 GP, Göteborgs-Posten Group
Göteborg
 Sweden 
GP, Göteborgs-Posten Group,  Göteborg  Sweden email: stig.nordqvist@gp.se
 Biography
 Stig Nordqvist - Stig is the Chief Information Officer at the Göteborgs-Posten Group, the second largest Swedish morning newspaper focused on daily morning newspapers and www-publishing. Stig has a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Media Technology from Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. The main area of interest and research has been focused on novel production management and control methods for digital networked production processes, primarily in newspaper production. During the years at KTH he also gave lectures, where responsible for courses and M.Sc thesis. He has also worked with projects related to commercial prepress and printing industries. Stig has also worked as an industry consultant and analyst and published over 60 articles in different large Scandinavian and European industry trade magazines. He holds the chair for the IFRAtrack WG 2 and 3 (XML) at IFRA and liaison with the CIP3 group as well as the GCA IAC. Stig also work with different national and international WG:s and associations.
Stenberg, Johan
 
 Johan  Stenberg
  MWM Media Workflow Management AB 
 Stockholm 
 Sweden 
MWM Media Workflow Management AB,  Stockholm  Sweden email: Johan.stenberg@mwm.se
 Biography
 Johan Stenberg - Johan Stenberg, Ph.D., Managing Director MWM Media Workflow Management AB. After a M.Sc.-degree (1991) in Graphic Arts Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), he joined a Ph.D.-programme at KTH. The focus of the research group Stenberg joined was production management methods and tools for a digital newspaper production environment. In 1994, he received a Licentiate of Technology and in 1997 a Ph.D. In February 1997 he became a project manager at the regional newspaper Ostgota Correspondenten in Linkoping, Sweden. Mr Stenberg was responsible for the implementation of a prototype of a IFRAtrack-based production management system, developed at KTH. In 1998, Johan Stenberg became Managing Director for MWM Media Workflow Management AB (MWM). MWM:s business is focused on developing, marketing and customizing management systems to the newspaper industry. Mr. Stenberg is 35 years old, married and the father of three children.
 Abstract
 Content management and production processes in the media industry are becoming more complex, time-critical and integrated. In a bit world this puts new demands on management and creates new possibilities of intersystem integration. The necessary IT infrastructure is available today, but the mechanisms for interchange of management information are not standardized.
 This paper presents the new XML-based IFRAtrack recommendation, a tracking information interchange mechanism for integrating production management systems in the media industry. IFRAtrack was developed jointly by representatives of newspapers, system manufacturers and research organizations.
 

Introduction and background

 

Media production in the eWorld

 The graphic arts industry – starting with the premedia operations at e.g. newspapers, magazines, ad agencies and catalogue producers – has undergone a radical change during the last 10 to 15 years. The Media, IT and communication industries have radically grown closer which drives changes for digitalisation and a richer mix of media types. For example in catalogue production there is a need for one hundred per cent control over the editing work – all the time!
 The former handicraft work and physical material flow managed by typesetters, lithographers and repro houses is more or less completely implemented in the software used by designers, photographers, journalists and other creators today. The standardised software is in larger operations, often one piece in the networked heterogeneous systems that form the infrastructure of the operations.
 The transition towards a completely digital premedia production in networked environments means that physical location is less important. The creative work as well as the more traditional production – plate making, printing and postpress operations is often carried out by many different organisations.
 The present condition means reduced lead times, more space for creativity and improved productivity, but also a need for new organisational models and new approaches with respect to an efficient workflow and quality assurance of the digital production processes. The production of today is more or less invisible and even more time critical. The many systems used within the invisible premedia production process and a time critical operation implies that there is a large need for production management solutions on a business wide level.
 

Management system concepts

CRM, Customer Relations Management
 		In the industry in general, new approaches and concepts in the area of management systems are seen. Improved performance, openness and standardisation regarding hardware and software, e.g. operative systems, network protocols and databases mean new possibilities to design and implement management systems. Examples of management system concepts where often former system islands are bridged areCRM ,ERP and the production system itself.
 ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning 
 		The system environment in a business can be designed using the “best-of-breed” solution. This means that the most suitable systems with respect to a specific operation and customer need are chosen. The different systems used, often from different vendors, are integrated in order to automate information exchange and improve the efficiency of the business.
 In 1994, the international technical newspaper organisation Ifra decided to develop a common platform in order to support standardised intersystem communication and a modern management system approach. The resulting recommendation, IFRAtrack, supports standardised information exchange between systems used in newspaper production and distribution . The Ifra initiative does not aim at creating a restrictive standard . Instead, a structured and open method for exchanging tracking information has been developed.
 Other parts of the graphic arts industry have taken different approaches to standardisation and intersystem communication. The CIP3-consortium consists of suppliers to the printing industry. The PPF, Print Production Format developed by CIP3, is a digital job ticket that is aimed to reduce lead times and improve quality in the area of machine pre-setting .
 Today, IFRAtrack is used in practice at several installations, some since 1995. Most of them are located in the Nordic countries which have been early adopters in the area of newspaper technology and highly automated newspaper production. Although the IFRAtrack-recommendation is well-documented and tested, there are still many suppliers and newspapers that do not use IFRAtrack.
 

IFRAtrack structure

 

Scope and purpose

 The primary objective of the IFRAtrack specification is to define a way to exchange status and management information between local and enterprise-wide systems. The proposed mechanism utilises the creation of enterprise-wide production management systems that can collect the information from various local systems. It also makes it possible to connect existing production system to an ERP-system (e.g. SAP, Oracle or a best of breed system) through a standard information exchange mechanism. The specification is based on three main points:
 
  • Semantics: the scope and content of the tracking data to be communicated is defined.
    •  
  • Syntax: the method of describing and encoding the tracking messages is specified. The systems that send and receive messages have to be uniquely named. The objects concerned by the messages should also be identified. All this information has to be encoded, preferably in a human readable form.
    •  
  • Message exchange mechanism: the method to exchange the tracking messages is also defined.
    •  The format has been built for flexibility and longevity. The object structure is separate from the process model. The object states and workflow states are also handled independently in the model. All these items are described in the IFRAtrack 2.0 specification . Any proposed standard method should be kept as simple as possible. The format has to be flexible enough to handle all the necessary status and management information on various levels of detail.
     IFRAtrack has been developed for the newspaper industry but can easily be implemented in magazine, catalogue and other print media production. The focus is to handle production process data, e.g. tracking and scheduling information that can be imported and exported to the systems that support IFRAtrack export or/and import. IFRAtrack does not handle sales, cost and other financial data so far.
     The issue for IFRAtrack is to make the standard more accessible reduce complexity and thereby cost reduced implementation and use. Moving from a proprietary message platform to XML is the key for this. Then we can focus our work on the semantics, objects and use of the standard.
     

    Object states and workflow states

     The main reason to send tracking messages is the change of object states. By associating events with objects and their states, a tracking system can follow the progress of production. An object can have a great number of state values. To extend the functionality of the IFRAtrack specification, any process state of an object can be associated with a deadline, specifying when the process state should have reached a specific value. If the value has not been reached by time of the deadline, the corresponding schedule state will be set to ”late” (or to ”warning” depending on the deadline statement). This means, that an object does not only contain information about its current state, but may also contain schedule information.
     
    IFRAtrack 2.0 data model with the different object classes
     

    Communication method

     The IFRAtrack specification contains a description of three possible mechanisms for explanation purposes: a central relational database approach, a file exchange approach and a tcp/ip socket approach. Other possible exchange implementations may be (list is not complete):
     
  • email
    •  
  • tcp broadcast
    •  
  • Object Request Brookers
    •  

    IFRAtrack original message format

     

    Developed in IMF, proprietary solution

    IMF, Ifra Message Format
         		In the beginning of the work, led by the IFRAtrack WG, there were several discussions about the vehicle of IFRAtrack. The message format was chosen from a vendor that supplied the grammatical and structure, this became the proprietaryIMF . A tracking message should contain the following information:
     
  • Time. The time when the message was generated.
    •  
  • Message sender. Information about the system generating the message and about the supplier of that system.
    •  
  • Object identifier. A unique identifier of the object concerned with the tracking message. The identifier must be either globally unique, or unique within a specified system. In the latter case the system together with the local identifier will function as the object identifier.
    •  
  • Object data. The object information transmitted in the message. The object data may include status change, attributes, links, deadlines and resource information.
    •  Many major suppliers of management systems to the newspaper industry support IFRAtrack . But, still there is a lack of standardised IFRAtrack-parsers and tools for validation of data and error handling of incoming IFRAtrack-messages. The present situation means that each supplier must develop its own software to interpret and validate the IMF-messages. A transition from IMF towards a more standardised message format e.g. based on XML-schemas will facilitate the handling of IFRAtrack-messages and probably lead to further increased use due to easier implementation.
     

    New message format based on XML

     

    Why XML for IFRAtrack

     A problem with the IMF format, the messaging format in the IFRAtrack 2.0 specification, is that it is proprietary and not based on any standard. Even though it is well documented, experience has shown that the description, given in an EBNF-like form, is difficult for developers to understand, which is a major cause why IFRAtrack is not more widespread than it is today.
     A messaging format based on XML could solve much of this problem. Since XML is becoming a widespread standard for exchanging various kinds of information, and most developers have at least a rudimentary knowledge of XML, it is now the natural choice for formats such as this. The time to get started with an implementation of IFRAtrack will decrease since no extra energy must be spent to understand the messaging format, and all energy can be spent on solving the actual problems.
     An additional benefit of using XML is the wide range of parsers and validators available for XML. To validate messages based on IMF messages, a company is more or less required to also write a parser for the messages, or to get someone else who already has implemented a parser to validate the messages. This process is time-consuming and error prone. With XML, a message supplier only needs a validating XML parser and the IFRAtrack specification in a DTD or an XML Schema, in order to validate a message. This will greatly reduce the probalility of misunderstandings and reduce the probability of malformed messages causing problems in a production environment. In short, it is easier to guarantee the quality of the messages.
     The freely available high quality parsers available for XML today also reduce the time to implement IFRAtrack receiving systems. Even though writing a parser for the IMF format is not a monumental task, it still takes a few weeks of implementation, bug finding and optimisation. This process can be reduced to a few days or even a few hours, if the parser is already written by someone else.
     

    Why schemas

     When the decision was made to base the new version of IFRAtrack on XML, the first draft versions of XML Schemas were already available If IFRAtrack would have been based on DTDs the conversion could have been started almost immediately, but if it should be based on XML Schemas the work would have to be postponed until the specifications were completed, or at least stable and feature complete. The decision fell on schemas for a number of reasons.
     The most important aspect was that schemas make it easier to extend and adapt the model for local newspapers. In order to keep the model simple and general, the IFRAtrack specification intentionally does not cover all aspects of newspaper production. Instead it is allowed to make local extensions, to fit the needs of a specific newspaper. However, with the IMF format it is left to the newspapers and IMF suppliers how to define and provide the extensions to the IMF readers.
     With XML Schemas, this can be approached in a much more controllable way. Using XML namespaces in conjunction with the schema feature of "refinement by extension" makes it possible to write a local adjustment for one specific newspaper, and still make the resulting xml pass validation tests. It also separates the actual tracking data (objects, attributes, status changes etc) from the message data (timestamps, sending applications etc) in a better way than before. This also gives new possibilities to extend the model to other publishing environments, such as web, television or radio productions, and even to completely different production environments. Since many newspapers are changing focus from being newspaper producers to media- or news producers, this can be very valuable in the future.
     Finally, another important benefit of using schemas are the greatly improved possibilities of data typing. DTDs gives very limited possibilities of typing data, other than strings and enumerations. With Schemas, all the data types described in the IFM specification can easily be described, and in addition new, complex data types can be generated. This reduces the risk of misunderstanding the specification, and gives a framework to describe the data types in a formal syntax.
     

    Added value to the recommendation

     

    IFRAtrack IMF-XML work

     It is important to note that changing to an XML based format instead of IMF does not affect the model itself, only the message format. This means that existing IFRAtrack compliant systems should not have a great difficulty to support the new XML based format. Even a multi format support would be reasonably feasible. In addition to the advantages for the current features of IFRAtrack, XML will also be a great platform for future enhancements. Such enhancements could be query support and command messages (messages requesting for something to be performed, rather than informing when it happens).
     A transition from IMF to DTD would mainly result in a new messaging envelope. Using XML schemas as the basis for IFRAtrack the recommendation will make it possible to develop structured customer specific additions. To go directly from IMF to XML schema is a bigger step, since there are more functionality that can be used. However, the result is a more flexible implementation. There are tools for converting DTDs to Schemas but to gain full benefit from Schemas we need to do more extensive manual work.
     

    Conclusions

     
  • To translate the message format from proprietary IFRAtrack-standard IMF to the world-wide accepted XML standard.
    •  
  • To reduce the implementation effort by using XML, thus getting access to a large group of skilled experts.
    •  
  • Standard tool components available for system supplier, e.g. parsers, modelling tools.
    •  
  • Faster implementation cycle for system supplier/integrator – i.e. more cost effective for both user and supplier.
    •  
  • The use of XML schema makes specialisation possible for both users and supplier.
    •  The use of IFRAtrack in order to bridge system islands and automate information exchange has several advantages. The supplier does not need to develop and maintain a variety of adapters in order to exchange information with external systems, a time consuming and non-profitable activity. The customers get well documented and tested interfaces between the systems, which result in reliability and modularity. Furthermore the IFRAtrack-model will replace or at least partly replace the need for adapters in order to get a common information exchange mechanism when using data from different suppliers in production related data warehouse solutions. There is definitely a win-win situation for suppliers and users in the use of a common message interchange mechanism.
     Acknowledgements
     Acknowledgements
     The authors wish to thank the members of all IFRAtrack working groups. Especially thanks to professor Nils Enlund, the father of IFRAtrack.
     Bibliography
     
    Ifra 1999 Ifra, 1999 “More secure catalogue production”, article in “IFRAtrack in practice”, paper describing case studies regarding IFRAtrack use, Ifra, Darmstadt, October, 12 p.
     
    Fällström 1997 Fällström, F. 1997 ”IFRAtrack 2.0 - a specification for the interchange of status- and management information between local and global production management systems in newspaper production”, Ifra Special Report 6.21.2, Darmstadt, October, 21 p.
     
    Enlund et al 1994 Enlund, N., Nordqvist, S., Alasuvanto, J. and Sulonen, R. 1994 ”An Object Model for Integrating Production Management in News papers”, Proceedings of the TAGA ’94 Conference, Rochester, NY, pp. 498–510.
     
    Daun et al 1998 Daun, S., Lucas, G. and Schönhut, J. 1998 ”Specification of the CIP3 Print Production Format”, Version 3.0, Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics, Darmstadt, May, 129 p.
     
    Newspaper Techniques 1999 Newspaper Techniques, 1999 “IFRAtrack: a current solution for the future”, Ifra, Darmstadt, April, pp. 29-31.
     
    Thompson et al 2000 Thompson, H.S., Beech, D., Maloney, M., Mendelsohn, N. 2000 ”XML Schema Part 1: Structures”, W3C Working Draft 25 February 2000”. http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/
     
    Biron et al 2000 Biron, P.V, Malhotra, A. 2000 ”XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes” W3C Working Draft 25 February 2000. http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/
     
    Bray et al 2000 Bray, T., Paoli, J., Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. 1998 ”W3C Recommendation” 10-February-1998. http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210
    Widely distributed digital printing   Table of contents   Indexes   Electronic book conversion and manufacturing using embedded tagging tools