IXIASOFT announced the availability of TEXTML Server 3.6. IXIASOFT has extended TEXTML Server’s functionality by providing users with new features enabling them to manage, search and sort extremely large document bases. Developed for the management of large volumes of content, the TEXTML Server “Meta Services” feature enables users to query multiple document bases from a single and/or multiple physical servers as if they were querying one single document base. TEXTML Server 3.6 now enables users to access fragments of a document upon a search result, instead of the whole document. This feature maximizes the speed at which search results can be obtained. For example, users can select to have only specific fields returned (ie. Title and Author) which optimizes the access of search results and reduces the amount of processing (XSLT) required on the application tier, especially when dealing with large volumes of documents. http://www.ixiasoft.com
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CM Professionals founding director and all-around great guy Bob Doyle has a cute take on DITA in the current EContent Magazine newsletter. Bob makes a lot of very good points, and also offers perhaps the best plain-English explanation of DITA’s value to implementers I have read:
While it is doubtful that out of the box DITA will find widespread use without customization (called specialization in DITA speak), the ready-made generic topic, and three “information-typed” specializations called concept, task, and reference, will get documentation teams producing very quickly. These documents will also be easily exchangeable with others. Because specializations inherit (thus the Darwinian name) properties from the general topics, their default behaviors–like printing, conversion to PDF, or XHTML Web pages–will produce decent results when transformed by default DITA XSLT style sheets.
One detail deserves mention though in Bob’s writeup. He refers to a “rumor” that Adobe recently used DITA to produce documentation. We know this rumor to be true, and have written about how Adobe used DITA to produce localized documentation for the recent release of Creative Suite 2. And, to all of Bob’s positive points we can add this one–at least two major companies (Adobe and Autodesk) have already used DITA to produce major documentation releases. Interestlingly, both Adobe and Autodesk used the same core technology to work with DITA–FrameMaker on the authoring side and Idiom World Server for content management and localization.
Hummingbird Ltd. (NASDAQ:HUMC) (NASDAQ: TSX:) (NASDAQ:HUM) announced the latest release of Hummingbird Integration Suite featuring Hummingbird Genio 6.0, the new version of its data integration platform that transforms, cleanses, enriches and directs information across the entire spectrum of decision support systems and enterprise applications. Hummingbird Genio is a data integration solution that spans the functional areas of data extract, transformation, and load (ETL) and enterprise application integration (EAI). At the core of Hummingbird Genio is an engine that controls the flow of data from various sources in a hub-and-spoke data exchange architecture. An integral component of Hummingbird Enterprise, Hummingbird Genio provides content integration capabilities between the Hummingbird Enterprise content management solution and external applications and content repositories. It allows migration and consolidation of content repositories without programming or data staging. http://www.hummingbird.com
XyEnterprise announced a new packaged offering for creating and publishing documentation for air, sea, and land vehicles used by the military. The new XyEnterprise offering targets content compliant with the S1000D standard, which prescribes the mark-up used in authoring and exchanging technical content describing these complex systems. The standard is maintained by the Aerospace and Defense Industries Association of Europe and the Aerospace Industries Association in the US and is increasingly mandated for existing and new military programs. This new offering integrates XyEnterprise’s Content@ content management software with editorial, publishing and interactive electronic viewing technologies (“IETM”), providing a complete solution for content creation, management and delivery of S1000D compliant data. The Content@ Solution Set for S1000D contains a Common Source Data Base providing history, version control, workflow and security that is pre-configured to support the S1000D specification. In addition, the common source data base provides support for other structured data types in SGML or XML format as well as unstructured data, binary files, graphics and other forms of content.
Quadralay Corporation announced the immediate availability of its software solution for creating online content, WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Adobe FrameMaker. WebWorks ePublisher Pro is a completely re-engineered, XML-based version of Quadralays single-source online publishing solution and is compatible with FrameMaker 7.2. WebWorks ePublisher Pro for FrameMaker gives users the ability to create customized content for the Web, intranets, professional online Help systems, portable devices, enterprise-ready XML, or PDFs. WebWorks ePublisher Pro for FrameMaker includes a new interface and XML-based processing for improved performance. The new application also includes an online content-preview window for visual style development, and GUI-based advanced customizations. A new feature called IntelliStyles automatically imports an authors preexisting FrameMaker styles into a WebWorks ePublisher Pro project. Adobe FrameMaker 7.2 software includes WebWorks Publisher Standard Edition 8.0. WebWorks ePublisher Pro is priced at US$1,395 for authors, and internationally for US$1,515. WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word is available for purchase by authors for US$1,000, and internationally for US$1,100.
If you have been hearing about Ajax technology and are curious, you might want to check out this pretty cool dictionary site. The developer offers a helpful explanation of how it works, including some potential risks and tradeoffs. Up until now, Google Suggest has been kind of the canonical example of Ajax for this kind of application, but I think I like this one better. Some of the bloggers over at ZDNet have been doing a nice job of explaining Ajax and other such technologies and how they will impact traditional applications such as Microsoft Office. I think there are all kinds of implications for content management, with authoring and search interfaces only the beginning.
The question is from Charlie Wood’s entry where he references a couple of reports by James Governor on Traction beating Lotus out at a European pharmaceutical organization, and Movable Type beating Lotus out at Alcatel. There is a free case study written by Suw Charman for the former on her blog.
Socialtext also has some increasingly interesting enterprise apps at e.g., Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Nokia, and has recent investment and a new board member from SAP.
We’ll be looking at some more detail on exactly what organizations like these are doing with blog and wiki tools in a follow-on report to Lauren’s earlier article, so let us know of any interesting case studies.
In answer to Charlie’s question, I would say ‘yes’ to collaboration and ‘partially’ to content management.
The new version 1.7 of Kentico CMS for ASP.NET introduces a new BizForms module that allows content editors to create and publish data entry forms on the web site. The captured data is sent to e-mail and stored in the database. The editor can then create simple reports and export data to Microsoft Excel. Creating on-line forms, such as “contact us” forms, surveys or event registration forms does not require expensive development. Instead, every end user can design a web form using various fields and add form to the page. Kentico CMS 1.7 also comes with a new Content Staging module. It allows organizations to edit and preview the whole web site on the staging server and publish it to the production server after testing. It also improves the security as the editing interface can be placed behind the firewall. Kentico CMS is $499 per web site and is available at http://www.kentico.com
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