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Chrystal Software   Johnson, Kari   San Diego   USA

Kari Johnson

Director of Marketing

Chrystal Software

10875 Rancho Bernardo Raod San Diego (California)  USA (92127) Email: kjohnson@chrystal.com Web site:http://www.chrystal.com

Biography

Kari Johnson is Vice President, Marketing for Chrystal Software, a Xerox New Enterprise company. Kari has over ten year's experience in the document management and content management industries, and has a master's degree in Information Sciences from the University of Michigan. She is responsible for the overall marketing efforts related to the company's two products: Astoria, Chrystal Software's flagship product for managing and delivering XML/SGML content, and Canterbury, a content management system for FrameMaker workgroups.

Astoria® provides content management for SGML and XML -based information. Astoria's object-oriented framework is adept at managing documents down to the component level, including retrieving, accessing, versioning, and securing each component individually. It also maintains the link between each component within the document, or documents.

Canterbury™ is a content management solution for Adobe FrameMaker workgroups and XML users. In less than a year from version 1.0 release, Canterbury has helped many companies achieve real benefits in improved time to global market, simultaneous distribution to the Web, paper and CD-ROM, and delivery to markets of one. Users gain all of the advantages of component-level management-faster searching, authoring, editing, review and revision, translation, and multimedia distribution. It provides a central repository for both com-pleted and in-progress documents that facilitates collaboration and information sharing across teams.

Introduction

Technology adoption often brings the opportunity for innovation, and this has certainly proved true for publishers. Whether producing publications for profit or in support of products, forward-thinking organizations moving to electronic management and publishing have changed the very way they view information. No longer constrained to the "paper paradigm " these organizations have redefined authoring and delivery processes.

This paper provides an inside view of three innovative organizations. These organizations and their experiences illustrate the rapid movement toward dynamic content delivery and expanded relationship management with customers and partners. One company has redefined automotive service by creating individualized repair procedures. Another is turning their linear training into multi-dimensional learning center, complete with best practices and knowledge bases. The third has significantly reduced author intervention by automatically building documents from external databases.

Additional information about these companies is available by contacting Chrystal Software at info@chrystal.com.

"Reuse to the Max": the story of MCC

In Europe there is a new, ultra-small car called the MicroCompact Car or "Smart Car" produced by Mercedes. The advertising slogan for this car is "reduce to the max" because the car is only 8 feet long. The slogan of the MCC authoring system is "reuse to the max" because everything was designed around the idea of reusing content.

The Smart Car

The approach taken by Mercedes in the design, development and service for the MicroCompact Car was unprecedented. The company wanted to deliver a car that was highly customizable, yet deliverable within a few days of order. And they intended to provide extraordinary "smart" service, by recognizing the car at the service bay and delivering customized service for that car. In support of these objectives, Mercedes minimized the number of suppliers, put them in the factory and created an online system that delivered exactly the documentation required at the time of service for each car.

To achieve its documentation goals, MCC made the radical decision to stop producing service manuals and instead create pools of reusable content. Today, the average reusable object has three steps. These objects are then combined to create removal and installation procedures which have between 10 and 100 steps. Some of the objects are used up to 100 times!

This innovative approach to authoring documentation has turned out to be even better than expected. On average each line of text is used 10 times! And this reuse rate is for one model, one model year.

MCC also took a component approach to the documentation system itself. By adopting XML/SGML and storing it in a highly adaptable content management system, MCC was able to ensure the greatest flexibility for the future. This theory was tested when the company supplying the XML/SGML editor went bankrupt. MCC had to quickly switch to another supplier. Although this went smoothly, MCC chose to move to a third editor when it was apparent that their second choice could not be customized as they desired. Within two weeks the system was back up and running with all the new customizations required. This experience is a real statement to the value of a standard format, stored in a well-designed content management system.

"Using Chrystal software, we have reduced the authoring costs for an automotive workshop manual by 50%."-- Jean Hamilton, Valley Forge

Best Practices: Compuware takes training to the web

Compuware Corporation is a leading provider of software products and professional services to the world's largest IT organizations. Since 1973, it has focused on optimizing the software applications that run businesses; how they're built, how they're tested, and how well they work in production. One of Compuware's flagship products is UNIFACE.

UNIFACE enables the construction, assembly, and deployment of component-based applications for distributed environments, including the Internet and client/server systems. The UNIFACE application assembly environment allows large IT users to successfully implement complex, business-critical applications in the midst of business and technology change. UNIFACE embraces the three critical dimensions shaping strategic applications: component-based development, component-based deployment, and component-based delivery.

The delivery methods and practices organization delivers "usage enablers," which are the documentation, training, online help, methods, and best practices that UNIFACE customers need to use the product. To accomplish this, the group is moving toward "E-support and services," which allow them to very quickly communicate and transfer knowledge to customers.

The group identified a number of goals to enable their customers to operate in a mode of self-sufficiency by making available online all of the information that they need, without relying on the availability of a person sitting in his office to answer questions. "We wanted to reuse similar topics in the various publications, and if possible generate these documents with information from the database," said Jim Gabriel, Manager of Authoring at Compuware. "We wanted to write things once, then reuse them many times. We realized we could increase our turnaround time significantly by working very efficiently."

According to Gabriel, "One of the reasons for looking for a product like Astoria was not only to avoid duplication of effort but also to circumvent the restrictions of the old fashioned way of doing things. The old book process kept us so busy getting a given set of books out the door that we weren't able to fill the books with the kind of quality, task-based information that we continually need to supply our users." That realization allowed Compuware to look at something that wasn't book-driven but rather component-driven. Astoria offers true document component management that a lot of other products aren't able to provide.

"We hired independent consultants to help us find the best-of-breed system in the marketplace, and Astoria ended up on each short list. We entered a very detailed comparison of all the candidate systems, and we discovered that Astoria could meet all of our requirements. Unlike a lot of other products, the Astoria product could actually support true document component management. In addition, Chrystal Software was able to demonstrate a real state-of-the-art understanding of our business."-- Jim Gabriel, Compuware

Reuse, reengineering and repurposing: Texas Instruments

Databooks are essential guides to the wide array of products in semiconductor industry. Without them, engineers would have a very difficult time determining the right technology to incorporate in their own high tech products. And purchasing agents would have a similar problem in order placement.

Like other manufacturers in this industry, Texas Instruments produces many databooks, comprised of many individual datasheets. The maintenance of these books is time-consuming and expensive. One common time-consuming task involves updating many occurrences of the same information, such as changing a product name throughout a databook. Another is related to the input of a significant volume of data from other sources.

Texas Instruments decided to adopt a common data format (XML/SGML) and a powerful content manager (Astoria) to reduce maintenance costs. By employing the managed reuse capability of their content management system, they have been able to make changes essentially in "real time". They have also connected the system to product data systems, enabling rapid creation and revision. Before implementing this system, the cost to revise a datasheet was roughly equivalent to the cost of its creation. Now the cost is dramatically reduced.

"Even something as simple as changing a product name can take weeks when it exists in 500 places across a hundred data sheets. It took Astoria about nine seconds."-- Jeff Barton, Texas Instruments

Cognitive Agents for Automatic Generation of Valid XML Documents		Table of contents		Indexes		XML Programming Models for Electronic Commerce Systems