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I applaud your initiative to get this site up and running. I'll volunteer to
help with bookmarks (links?) and the database - although such help may come
in fits and starts as I am heavily involved in various knowledge management
rollouts in the Tenix Group.
I've already added a file on single-source definitions and theory I've had
floating around for some time to this group's Files section: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/singlesourcing-mgmt/files/Single%20Source%20Th
eory/. [Note: Yahoo or your browser may break the link, so patch the pieces
together or look directly]. An earlier version was posted to the XML-doc
forum, and I will eventually rework this into a proper whitepaper, but
people may find the present state to be of some use in developing their
thinking on single source issues. This relates directly to the exchange
between David Neeley and Ed Nixon about what single sourcing actually means.
To me the most important function of single sourcing is to reduce or
eliminate the need to maintain the same texts in multiple places. Under this
broad definition, single sourcing is equivalent to the concept of
normalisation in the relational database world. As detailed in the paper,
there are three fundamentally different approaches for doing this:
1. Master documents with conditional text - where all of the textual
variants are kept in the one document and resolved into the appropriate
deliverable formats through some form of output processing - e.g.,
FrameMaker with FDK, MS Word macro systems, Epic script processes, Perl
scripts, etc. This doesn't require a content management system separate from
the authoring environment, but it is limited in its scope to what can be
done with a single master file.
2. Virtual documents, which contain only text that is unique to the
particular deliverable, and place holders that point to the location of text
elements that already exist somewhere else in the document. This allows true
normalisation, but requires a reasonably sophisticated content management
database to make it work. SGML and XML formats are particularly suited to
being processed this way. RMIT's TeraText (http://www.teratext.com),
Xyenterprise's Content -at- XML (http://www.xyenterprise.com), Astoria (now owned
by Lightspeed Interactive - which I presume forms part of their iEngine http://www.lspeed.com/products/iengine/frameset.html) and Software AG's
Tamino (http://www.softwareag.com/tamino/) are all content database
applications that can be implemented to do this - although so far as I know
none of them offer complete out-of-the-box solutions that can be used
without significant tailoring costs. Even though such solutions are quite
expensive, I still think they are the most cost-effective approach for large
sites with complex content management issues.
3. Reusable entities - using the entity management capabilities more-or-less
provided by the core specifications for XML and SGML. These can be used at
several levels of sophistication - from the by-hand maintenance of standard
texts in a set of entity files in an open directory to reasonably
sophisticated database applications such as SiberLogic's SiberSafe
(http://www.siberlogic.com) - which seems to be significantly less expensive
than some of the generic content management databases.
By way of introducing myself, the company I work for (http://www.tenix.com)
is Australia's largest defence contractor. If today's newspaper is to be!
believed, we may end up being the sole shipbuilder to the Australian Navy
(http://afr.com/australia/2002/05/15/FFXGDDTN61D.html). Since 1990 I have
been responsible to some degree for content authoring, management and
delivery systems for technical and contractual documentation in this
environment. Despite being a member of the Techwr-l list, most of my writing
is internal and business development stuff in the doco systems area.
I am an ex academic, with a PhD in evolutionary biology from Harvard and 7
years teaching and research in this discipline before I retooled myself as
an evangelist for microcomputer systems, via computer education and computer
literacy projects. From 1983-87 I wrote and produced all end-user
documentation for a small software house producing multi-user business
management systems in the CP/M environment for import, warehousing,
distribution, financial, insurance and clinical practice type businesses
(beautiful applications on the wrong platform for the market). In 1988-89 I
was documentation manager for a recently computerised medium sized building
society which became a bank, where I drafted the management overview of the
complete Hogan banking system.
Most of the time since I joined Tenix I have been associated with the ANZAC
Ship Project to build 10 frigates - 8 for the Australian Navy and 2 for the
New Zealand Navy. I eventually solved our major outstanding documentation
problem - how to deliver configuration managed, ship-specific maintenance
procedures from a single source database (see http://www.tenix.com/PDFLibrary/91.pdf). Since then I have managed to the
Strategy and Development group attached to Tenix Head Office, where I am
working on solutions we hope to roll out across the entire corporation.
My current doco systems task is piloting SpeedLegal's XML-based
SmartPrecedent
(http://www.speedlegal.com) authoring system for our standalone contracts
(e.g., NDA's, Service Agreements, etc). This an authoring environment
initially developed for precedents based contractual documentation, but can
readily be adapted to use any DTD and add intelligence to it. SmartPrecedent
combines ideas from both the master document and virtual document approaches
with a GUI for building the script for assembling the pieces into an output
document. One of my tests will be to see how easily at adapts to technical
documentation. Like the TeraText, now being marketed in the US and Europe
under the TeraText banner by SAIC, SmartPrecedent leads the rest of the
world in the precedents-based authoring market.
Regards,
Bill Hall
Documentation Systems Analyst
Strategy and Development Group
Tenix Defence
Nelson House, Nelson Place
Williamstown, Vic. 3016
Australia
URL: http://www.tenix.com
Mailto:bill -dot- hall -at- tenix -dot- com
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Information is not knowledge
Knowledge is not wisdom
Wisdom is not truth
Truth is not beauty
Beauty is not love
Love is not music
Music is THE BEST
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(Frank Zappa, Packard Goose)
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