MHE - Consultants for Document and Datament Technologies The XML Bubble William J. “Bill”...

MHE - Consultants for Document and Datament Technologies

The XML Bubble

William J. “Bill” McCalpin

EDPP, CDIA, MIT, LIT

Principal, MHE


Xplor 21st Global Conference and Exhibit

Miami Beach, Florida

October 30, 2000


Introduction

The Hegelian Dialectic


Thesis, Antithesis, SynthesisIn the philosophy of Hegel,

these words show the inevitable transition of thought, by contradiction and reconciliation, from an initial conviction to its opposite and then to a new, higher conception that involves but transcends both of them


The Hegelian Dialetic

• Thesis: Most business have well-established, productive legacy systems

• Antithesis: XML is springing forth everywhere

• Synthesis: XML will be integrated with legacy systems - enhancing some processes, changing many others, and eliminating some altogether

• In short, XML will affect what you do


The Document In The 20th Century


What Is A Document?

• The American Heritage Dictionary defines a document as “information in writing placed on a medium such as paper, often used as a record.”

• Documents have been placed on clay tablets, gold leaf, animal skins, all types of paper, microfilm, optical storage, and so on


Information And Presentation

• In every case, the document represents a fundamental union of information and presentation

• But “presentation” presumes that the primary audience for the document is a human being

• With the coming of the Internet, this is no longer the case


The Curse Of Presentation• Composition

products require that you specify a printer, even before you know where the document will print


Why Are Print, Image, And Presentation Formats

Incompatible?


Printing And Imaging Formats

• Many printing formats: AFP, Metacode, DJDE, XES (UDK), PostScript, PCL, etc.

• All formats use external resources like fonts, forms, graphics, etc., although sometimes inconsistently

• Most are escape-sequence based, some are formal data architectures, and some are almost programming languages


Printing And Imaging Formats

• Many imaging formats - while most used CCITT Group 4 for image compression, most also had proprietary data wrappers

• Later systems adopted text-based formats such as PDF, although storing other print streams is not unknown

• Systems which store text-based formats must wrestle with resource issues


Different Print Formats• Why do printers have different formats?

Because of physical constraints imposed by the hardware:– resources reduce the amount of data sent through

pipeline to printer– pages must be imaged in less than a fraction of a

second– complex graphics can be developed on the

printer, but this needs a special language


Different Imaging Formats• Why do imaging systems have different

formats: because of physical constraints imposed by the hardware:– Mass storage was expensive

– Indexing schemes were too close to the application

– Text is avoided sometimes because of resource issues

– Interoperability with other products an issue


Result

• In each case, data architecture decisions were made in order to enhance some aspect of legibility of the stored objects.

• If there were no requirement to present the information (to a human reader), then the requirement for custom data formats for each vendor would probably disappear!


Universal Literacy

Who’s reading our documents?


The Road To Universal Literacy

• First, only the few could read

• After the printing press, the many began to read

• Eventually, educational reforms brought the ability to read to all


Literacy In The Internet Age

• Can there be a spread of literacy beyond “all”?

• How many webpages have you ever read?

• You will never be able to keep up with the Web – alone


Intelligent Agents

• Just around the corner is software that will read the Web for us – not search, but read

• So we have to spread literacy to an audience beyond “all” – people, that is

• Does increased quality in presentation mean better computer literacy?


Noise On The Net• Think of the average webpage:

three dimensional spinning objects marquees scrolling across the bottom multiple frames bookmarks audio

• These items are all designed to attract the eye – your eye

• This does nothing for the machine reading the webpage


The Cost Of Data Differences“NASA lost a $125

million Mars orbiter because one engineering team used metric units while another used English units for a key spacecraft operation...” CNN 9/30/99


The Nature Of XML


XML And SGML

• XML is eXtensible Markup Language

• XML is an instance of SGML, Standard Generalized Markup Language, an ISO standard (ISO 8879)

• XML is “extensible” because people and enterprises with common interests get together to define the tags which describe their data


XML And Print Formats

• In most print formats, something like account number would be:– AMB 200 AMI 300 SCFL 01 STO 0, 90 TRN

12345-67890

• In XML, the same information is:– <account_number>12345-67890


XML And Print Formats

• The nature of all print formats is to be focused on the presentation of the information.

• The nature of XML is focused on the “author’s content”, that is, information is described as what it is, not how it looks.


Why XML Over Print?

• Given that print formats are focused on the presentation, it is often difficult for the non-human reader to derive information out of the print data.

• E.g., we could have:– AMB 200 AMI 300 SCFL 01 STO 0,90 TRN

12345 RMI120 TRN - RMI 24 TRN 67890– Note the data is not required to be contiguous


Separating Information From Presentation

• XML enables the total separation of information from presentation

• Thus, some XML objects have only tagged information, while others have content and presentation information

XML

XSL

XML


The Four Spaces


Dr. Davidson’s DocumentSpace• Dr. Keith Davidson,

EDPP, hypothesized that we work in something called the “DocumentSpace”

• He believes that industries will become spaces under the influence of the Internet


Three Spaces• Dr. Davidson stated that there were three

spaces: PrintSpace, MarketSpace, and DecisionSpace

• PrintSpace comprised our existing industry

• MarketSpace covered documents used in financial transactions

• DecisionSpace deals with documents used in knowledge management


Three Spaces Become Four

• I have added a fourth space: ArchiveSpace, the use of documents in archival and records management to preserve information

• These four spaces can be viewed as --->


The Use Of The Document In The Four Spaces


Document And Information• The document is used as a container of

information, particularly in the exchange of information across the boundaries between the four spaces

• Documents are used for two reasons: – (1) The lack of common data standards across the

four spaces, and– (2) The requirement that humans be able to read

and process the information


Print To Image


Print To Image Format• Print formats are Metacode, DJDE, AFP,

PCL, PostScript, and so on

• Image formats are TIFF, MO:DCA, other proprietary formats using CCITT-4, and PDF

• Only AFP & MODCA, and PostScript & PDF are closely related, but PostScript to PDF requires a transform, and AFP and MO:DCA often aren’t implemented the same


Print To Market


Print To Market Formats• Print formats are Metacode, DJDE, AFP, PCL,

PostScript, and so on• Financial Interchange formats are OFX/IFX,

XML, and “transaction” data• The significant data must be extracted out of the

print stream to create data for SGML formats - a sometimes hazardous process

• However, using original transaction data may not be correct


Print To Knowledge


Print To Knowledge Formats• Print formats are Metacode, DJDE, AFP, PCL,

PostScript, and so on• True Knowledge Management does not yet

exist - it’s often blob management• XML and its many related standards will make

KM possible, if you think of KM as something like human knowledge

• As noted, XML out of existing processes can be hazardous


The Growth Of The XML Bubble


PolicyPrint

Reports

1:1Mark.

Billing

EDI

Com-pliance

CampaignManage.

CRM

Pol. &Proc.

Archive

Notices

New Sales

HR

Reprints


PolicyPrint

Reports

1:1Mark.

Billing

EDI

Com-pliance

CampaignManage.

CRM

Pol. &Proc.

Archive

Notices

New Sales

HR

Reprints

XML

EBPP


PolicyPrint

Reports

1:1Mark.

Billing

EDI

Com-pliance

CampaignManage.

CRM

Pol. &Proc.

Archive

Notices

New Sales

HR

Reprints

XML

EBPP


PolicyPrint

Reports

1:1Mark.

Billing

EDI

Com-pliance

CampaignManage.

CRM

Pol. &Proc.

Archive

Notices

New Sales

HR

Reprints

XML

EBPP


PolicyPrint

Reports

1:1Mark.

Billing

EDI

Com-pliance

CampaignManage.

CRM

Pol. &Proc.

Archive

Notices

New Sales

HR

Reprints

XML

EBPP


PolicyPrint

Reports

1:1Mark.

Billing

EDI

Com-pliance

CampaignManage.

CRM

Pol. &Proc.

Archive

Notices

New Sales

HR

Reprints

XML

EBPP


PolicyPrint

Reports

1:1Mark.

Billing

EDI

Com-pliance

CampaignManage.

CRM

Pol. &Proc.

Archive

Notices

New Sales

HR

Reprints

XML

EBPP


William J. “Bill” McCalpin

EDPP, CDIA, MIT, LIT

Principal, MHE

1400 Cheyenne Dr.

Richardson, Texas 75080-3921

972-231-3660 (v) 972-690-4521 (f)

[email protected]

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