Re: XML content management systems

["Lech Rzedzicki" <xchaotic -at- gmail -dot- com>]

And if it's not not top secret, you could post more details on your
use cases, subject matter, so perhaps people who have gone through
similar transformations can share their experiences and insights.

In my adventures with CMS, I have been working with documentation
departments in life-sciences, telecoms and legal.
In all those cases, most problems and requirements stemmed from
regulations specific to the industry rather than being generic CMS
issues, such as level of reuse or reuse chunks management.


Lech

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 3:39 PM, Yaakov Gelber <yaacovg2007 -at- hotmail -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Thanks. I will do some more home work.
>
>  Yaacovg
>
>
>
>
>  ________________________________
>
>  > Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 15:29:49 +0100
>
> > From: xchaotic -at- gmail -dot- com
> > To: yaacovg2007 -at- hotmail -dot- com
> > Subject: Re: XML content management systems
> > CC: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> >
>
> > In that case I don't think SharePoint is likely to fulfill those
> requirements.
> >
> > As a first step, I think, you might need to change your authoring
> > environment. Any variations of Word products may produce consistently
> > styled conent, but it's simply to easy to stray from there, even
> > unintentionally. Also Word's native OOXML format is difficult to work
> > with (th specification spanning thousands of pages, arguably not XML
> > in some places).
> > Switching to a more suitable format such as DITA, encourages reuse by
> > default and is becoming the de facto standard for tech writing
> > departments. Through specialization, you may adapt DITA to suit your
> > particular needs.
> >
> > I personally had to work with processes where Word format was the
> > desired output (due to it being widespread), it worked well as a
> > presentation tool. Any attempt to merge the changes from Word to the
> > CMS is in my view a risky attempt.
> >
> > As for XML-based CMS, there really is a lot of them out there. I
> > suggest reading STC Intercom edition devoted to planning and choosing
> > a CMS implementation.
> >
> > Then maybe http://cmswatch.com/, just to see the plethora of solution
> > on the market.
> >
> > There really is a lot of factors to ponder upon, technical,
> > managerial, philosophical.
> >
> > For instance, for any large enough repository, scalability and
> > performance become issues - if your writers are used to editing
> > offline, performance of many CMSes might be noticeably slow.
> >
> > Workflows only makes sense if they are well-designed and integrated
> > with the tools. I think this is one particular are where Sharepoint
> > excels - you can use use API to program custom workflows. In my
> > experience, I find it much more difficult for the management to use &
> > grasp the ideas of CMS than writers themselves.
> >
> > Almost every time, you need to customize the CMS solution to you
> > needs, you need to ensure that it's configurable enough (many CMSes
> > don't expose APIs for crucial functions so you're stuck with default
> > behavior) and that you have the resources to do so (in-house full-time
> > programmer ?).
> >
> > From the plethora of choices I see two ends of the spectrum:
> > a) small, usually open-source solutions, usually adapting existing
> > tech such as wikis, DITA OT, SVN, exist to form a basic CMS
> > b) huge players, Microsoft, PTC, IBM than can provide end-to-end
> > solutions (editor + database + workflows + nice GUI).
> > For instance in case of PTC that would be Epic Editor + XHive XML DB +
> > Documentum as a sample configuration.
> >
> >
> > It really is becoming a huge field as almost every company needs to
> > manage their knowledge and assets via some form of CMS.
> > The right choice can only be made knowing the specific use cases. An
> > that is only the beginning of the road, it needs to be followed by a
> > well-governed implementation and migration, followed by user training
> > and careful maintenance, including but not limited to managing the
> > reusable content.
> >
> > Lech
>
>
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