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 XML 
 content management 
 

XML wireless Web and the future of e-business

 achieving competitive advantage with content management and XML
Sindall, Jeremy
 
 Jeremy  Sindall
 European Vice President
 Surrey
The e-content company
 United Kingdom 
Weybridge
The e-content company,  Persimmon House
Brooklands Business Park
Weybridge  Surrey  KT13 0YP United Kingdom
Phone: +44 (0)1932 356800 Fax: +44 (0)1932 356850 email: jsindall@xmlecontent.com web site: www.xmlecontent.com
 Biography
 Jeremy Sindall - Jeremy Sindall was appointed European Vice President of Interleaf's new strategic division 'the e-content company' in July 1999. He is responsible for driving Interleaf within the e-business market space and ensuring that they remain the dominant supplier in the provision of best of breed XML e-content solutions across Europe.
 Jeremy joined Interleaf as Northern European Sales Director in October 1997 with responsibility for the UK, Nordic region and Benelux. Jeremy has over 13 years experience in the publishing, document management and Workflow market with companies like Rank Xerox, Xsoft and FileNet. During his time at Interleaf Jeremy has been responsible for the building of a new sales, marketing and professional services team that led to the successful turnaround of the Northern European business.
 As operations Director for the software division of Xerox, Xsoft Southern Europe Jeremy was based in Paris and has great insight into the European software market. Jeremy and his team helped to create a market for Xerox's Workflow and content management technologies, which were subsequently turned into two pre-IPO companies; InConcert and Chrystal Software.
 Abstract
 Jeremy will use customer presentations to show how companies are transforming not only web content, but also all of their corporate information to create a unique and personalised experience for each customer, employee and business partner. This produces a dynamic new environment that is transforming traditional business models forever and providing powerful competitive advantages, efficient use and re-us and generating new profit models.
 XML 
 

E-content for e-business - why this is ideally suited to XML

 

The e-business market

 
E-content is part of the e-business picture
 It has only been a few short years since the Internet has revolutionised business. Yet in that time customers have already come to expect current, up-to-date information to be available on commercial Web sites. Such expectations place extraordinary demands on content suppliers who must assure the currency, accuracy and thoroughness of their information.
 Moreover, customers are rapidly becoming accustomed to information designed specifically for their particular needs. Information systems must be able to produce customised data in real time for each of potentially millions of clients and partners. And, as electronic commerce networks grow more interdependent, the demand for customised information transfer between corporate computing networks – e.g., parts catalogues – will continue to grow.
 All of these demands will pose daunting challenges to IT professionals who must respond effectively to accelerating requirements for instant information production.
 Here are some examples of new e-business applications and the kind of content they require:
 Example e-business applications
 
Internet Banking Content on Internet banking sites is legally required to follow rules and regulations which are ever changing, it consists of many, many pieces of information and is on view 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Some content is repeated in multiple places and needs to be easily and consistently updated.
 
e-Catalogs The content of an e-catalog is the backbone of e-Commerce applications, consisting of millions of chunks of information, catalogues need to be constantly updated to suit supply and demand. Catalogues need to be created in formats that allow businesses to design, create, manage and custom-publish product information “on-the-fly”.
 
e-Supply Chain Large manufacturing companies need to share and reuse technical information; product specifications, overhaul manuals, pricing structures etc, in order to reduce the amount of time it takes to deliver custom documentation and strengthening the relationships with their OEM customers.
 
e-Training These days individuals are under pressure to constantly improve their performance and to develop their skills. No one has the time to undertake poorly matched training courses. Training departments and organisations are under pressure to personalise the content of training courses so that they can be tailored to suit an individual's ability and experience, and often need to make them available on the Internet.
 
e-Procurement Procuring from suppliers over the web can offer substantial cost and time savings for large organisations with the power to demand it. Content must be up to date, correct and easily accessible and linked to supplier histories and commercial detail. This must also be backed up by faultless fulfillment.
 
e-Publishing Publishing across the Internet has opened commercial opportunities that simply could not have existed previously. These opportunities rely on reuse and repurposing of content that previously would have been reproduced in only one format – i.e. in bound paper documents. The electronic content advantage will allow published material to be personalised and reformatted in an infinite variety of ways.
 In summary, the essence of a content management system is that information is treated as granular, manageable “chunks”, orcomponents , which can be accessed, updated, and combined in real time.
 Standards 
 

Why is XML the standard for managing e-content?

 W3C 
 		In 1996 theW3C and some 80 SGML experts joined forces to develop a permanent solution to the problems of HTML. After much design and debate XML was standardised in February of 1998.
 
Power of XML content management
One key feature of an XML based content management system is that the content “chunks” as we’ve described them consist only of data (be it text, graphics, tables etc) – all presentation information is kept separate. This allows thestyling to occur as the information is being delivered, and this in turn means that information managed by a content management system can be easily repurposed to any number of targets. For example, since the information is managed, it can be easily and automatically reformatted for devices such as handheld computers and pagers.
When properly structured, information in a content management system can represent a significant asset to the corporation. Because the data is kept in a semantically rich database, powerful search engines can rapidly scan through the data and return useful, relevant information, far more useful than typical present-day Web searches.
Moreover, because of its structure, the content management data can be manipulated by data mining and other business intelligence tools in order to extrapolate key trends and other hidden information – again providing a distinct competitive advantage.
 

XML and XSL: a real solution

 XSL 
 		WithXSL , it is possible to develop style sheets that can transform raw content into presentations appropriate for the receiving device
 Here is how it works: upon receipt of a URL, the Web server passes the request for content to the content management system, which retrieves the appropriate content from its database. This content can either be in XML or HTML. Then the content management system loads an XSL style sheet that has been created to render this content in a fashion appropriate for the requesting device. Thus for a PC, the content management system might output a visually rich HTML page replete with frames, advertisements, graphics, and multimedia; but for a Web-enabled mobile phone, it would deliver a much more compact version of the same content. Ultimately, content designers have complete control over how their information is rendered on all these different devices.
Requirements
 

Requirements of an enterprise content management system

 The enterprise content management system can be seen as thefoundation of a company’s information infrastructure. Indeed, the more complete its implementation, the more value it provides its users. Let us examine in detail the feature set a content management system should optimally provide:
 End to end content control. Ideally, the content management system should be able to control and manage content from its creation, that is, its authoring, through the document assembly process and ultimately to publishing.
 Management of document components. As we have seen, modern documents are composed of components, which are assembled dynamically. Each of these components should be securely managed; that is, the content management system should require editors to “check out” components (much as they would a library book) in order to prevent concurrency issues. Moreover, the content management should maintain multiple versions of a component so that prior versions can be accessed if desired.
 Offline operation. In today’s mobile world knowledge workers are frequently disconnected from the corporate network. This limitation, however, should not impede their ability to work on content management-managed documents or components.
 Popular document creation tools. The content management should not require an entirely new investment in knowledge worker training; rather, it should support popular tools, such as Microsoft® Word or PowerPoint® in addition to others.
 Powerful, content-centric database. Traditional table-oriented relational databases do not map well to content stores. Why? Because documents tend not to have the formal, strict structure required; mapping them to rows and columns can be cumbersome and slow. Rather, the store should easily accommodate the flexible, semi-structured nature of documents.
 Dynamic assembly. Just-in-time documents are created in response to a consumer’s query, which might be as simple as a Web request. This means that the document, which might never have existed before as a single, consolidated unit, might be built for the first time for that customer.
 Separate style from content. Style (fonts, colors, margins, and so forth) should be kept separately from the actual content. So the content can be directed to as wide a variety of targets as possible.
 HTML, Hypertext Markup Language 
 		Powerful publishing engine. No content management system is complete without a means of publishing its documents. The publishing engine should permit documents of any size, ranging from a page or two to thousands of pages, to be rendered quickly and efficiently. Moreover, the engine should be flexible enough to support a wide variety of formats, from the Web’sHTML to PostScript, PCL, and many others for print. In each case the publishing engine should style the document appropriately for the output medium.
 Open standards. A content management system should support open, published standards. From a technical point of view open standards allow easy interoperability between machines and formats; from a business point of view open standards supply investment protection.
 
Power of content management
 WAP 
 

Wireless e-commerce – write once, output everywhere

 By 2002, half of all devices connected to the Web will be devices other than PCs. (IDC).
 With an expected 600 million cell phones by 2002 and high growth in PDA’s the “gold rush” is on (Gartner Group).
 WAP 
 		In EuropeWAP phones are being offered by all the major manufacturers, and service providers are spending marketing funds on advertising the advantages of accessing the internet via a remote device such as a phone or PDA.
 But what’s a webmaster to do? If the first generation Website is in HTML then there will be problems outputting to these remote WAP devices. XML/XSL architecture makes it possible for the site to dynamically recognise client devices and style content according to the display requirements of each receiving device. While other wireless Web sites arbitrarily delete content to fit the specific display requirements of wireless devices, or dedicate multiple repositories for a specific device type, an XML enabled web site features a single repository to store all content. This eliminates the need to duplicate content in order to meet the specific display requirements of each device. Through the power of XSL, enterprises can now significantly extend the reach of their web applications by seamlessly transforming XML business content into any presentation format.
 The following demonstration shows how XML based content on a web site can be repurposed to suit the needs of customers, employees, suppliers and remote workers.
 

Demonstrations

 Demonstration 
 

Semiconductor manufacturing company

 This is a demonstration from an American Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. One of the world’s top manufacturers of embedded processors to electronic manufacturers specialising in the development of integrated semiconductor solutions and components for the consumer, networking, computing, transportation and wireless markets.
 Prior to implementing their content management solution, the board of this company identified supply chain efficiency as a primary means of improving time to market.
 The company’s BladeRunner™ solution is being used to integrate the exchange of technical information among the many vendors along the manufacturing supply chain during the product development cycle and ultimately to deliver the technical documentation for the manufactured products tailored for each OEM customer.
 By standardising on XML and BladeRunner, the company is easing the process of sharing and reusing the technical information that makes up a product’s specifications, reducing the amount of time it takes to deliver custom documentation and strengthening the relationships with their OEM customers.
 This demonstration is available in CD format from Interleaf.
 Demonstration 
 

Travel Books.com

 The success of Amazon.com has forced publishers and booksellers to look to their marketing departments for new ideas to ensure that they can continue to compete. A global publishing company turned to BladeRunner to turn a world beating idea into reality – using the benefits of XML to their commercial advantage by providing the ability for customers to design and print their own personalised travel guides online.
 Having licensed the content of a wide range of travel guides Travel Books.com are able to offer their customers a personalised printing service. The content of the travel guides is held as XML objects in a repository. Visitors to the web site are asked to enter personal details about themselves and their travelling companions. Then with a particular trip in mind they can select the destinations that they wish to visit and the type of accommodation and activity they want when they get there. Drawing on the breadth of content available in the repository this publisher can create and publish a unique travel book personalised to the customer’s requirements. Even the title and cover of the guide will be personal to the customer. This ‘book’ can then be delivered as a bound paper document; a CD or Internet accessed file.
 Further information on this application and BladeRunner™ is available from Interleaf.
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