Content Oriented Architectures: Putting Content at the Center of CM Projects
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Content Oriented Architectures Joe Gollner [email protected] / www.stilo.com Vice President, Enterprise Solutions Stilo International Putting Content at the Center of CM Projects
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Presented by Joe Gollner at Documentation and Training East, October The most common mistake found in content management projects is rather surprising. The reason most CM projects falter is that the project team, and frequently its stakeholders, become unduly enamored with some piece of technology and assume, or hope, that one or two applications will erase all of the challenges surrounding the creation, management, reuse and delivery of content. When a particular collection of applications fail to deliver on the expectations, the usual response is to insert even more applications. With each new application that is introduced, a number of connectors and patches are also added so that one tool can work with the others that are already in place. This continues until, with seeming inevitability, these projects crumble under the weight of growing system complexity. These projects fail, in short, because, in becoming fixated on technology, they essentially forget about their content. This presentation will use a number of project cases studies, some older and some exceedingly current, to illustrate the downward path that most CM projects follow. While this might sound ominous, this journey will actually arrive at a hopeful conclusion. If CM projects place content at the center of their solution designs, adopting in effect a Content Oriented Architecture (COA), it becomes possible for projects to use technology, even exploit it, in ways that emphasize helping authors, publishers and content users. Under this model, the quality and usefulness of the content assets becomes the overriding focus and where automation is introduced it is to either further improve the quality of the content or to reduce the cost and effort needed to achieve the desired results. Examples of successful projects will be used to prove that Content Oriented Architectures are not really new and that they do deliver results that endure over time.
Transcript of Content Oriented Architectures: Putting Content at the Center of CM Projects
Content Oriented Architectures
Joe [email protected] / www.stilo.com
Vice President, Enterprise Solutions Stilo International
Putting Content at the Center of CM Projects
Deer in the “Application” Headlights
ProductData Management
Repository
StructuredAuthoring
(Book Orientation)
Problem 2:Processing of instancesexceeded the capacity ofpublishing tools
Problem 1:Implementation of repository& authoring tool madecontent reuse difficult
TopicsThe Perils of Application Orientation
Case Study: An Unhappy Tale
The Attractions of Application Orientation
A Tale of Three ProjectsSaved from Destruction
Content Oriented Architectures
The Perils of Application Orientation
Authoring
Application
Printing
Application
Each application introduces constraints on the content inputs / outputs and these are frequently incompatible with each other
Printing
Application
Importing
Application
Indexing
Application
Viewing
Application
The Nature of Software ApplicationsSoftware Applications share a number of traits
Developed to address a specific purposePredicated on data inputswith predictable structures and valuesGuided by “definitive” algorithms through which a result can be determined
Applications depend onStrict controlFixed scopeLimited timeframe
or
Conditions Satisfied
Purpose
Application
Purpose
Applications are toolsthat amplify the
skills of people toenhance performance
The Limits of Integration
Authoring
Application
Importing
Application
Indexing
Application
Viewing
Application
Loading
Application
Exporting
Application
PDF Publishing
Application
Web Publishing
Application
Storing
Application
Failu
re T
hres
hold
Case Study: Electronic Regulatory Filing
National Energy Board (NEB) of CanadaRegulatory Agency governing the Canadian Energy Industry“Court of Record” (Convenes Hearings & Makes Judgments)
1993 – Vision articulated of an electronic regulatory filing process
Based on Open StandardsPut in place a solution
To be shared across the industryManagement repositoryPublishing servicesAuthoring toolsValidation & interchange tools
ERF Content Model
The ERF Content Model provedto be substantially more complexthan could be realistically used
Electronic Regulatory Application ArchitectureRecipe for Disaster:- Complex DTD- Customized authoring tools
- WordPerfect- XMetal- MS Excel
- Over-burdened repository- Astoria
- Over-burdened publishing tool- FrameMaker
Project Outcomes & Lessons Learned
Project was a Complete FailureProject Managers ignored early warnings
The solution was too complex to be feasibleTechnology architecture was fundamentally flawed
Application components were pushed beyond their capabilities Application components were heavily customized
Version upgrades in platforms had to be avoided for:Content repository, publishing engine, authoring tools
Practical constraints on content markup became outrageousStandardized formatting was not acceptable to stakeholders
$10 Million investment was lost when the project was cancelled by executive management after 10 years
The Attraction of ApplicationsApplications hold great attraction
Especially for managementNot entirely unreasonable as they:
Make specific knowledge executable & efficient to leverageProvide repeatable benefitsOffer the potential to “scale”
Application InvestmentsTend to have a mixed implementation track recordTend to have a relatively short lifespan
Underlying knowledge is invalidated or superseded Changing business environment reduces effectivenessInflexibility leads to “barnaclization” of application investment
A Tale of Three Projects Saved from Destruction
Software Engineering SolutionScenario: Metropolitan Area Network equipment supplier finds itscore business strategy threatened by application limitations.
Global Case Management SystemScenario: Massive project to integrate a variety of content servicesinto a global CRM platform threatened to become an even biggerproject due to fundamental application incompatibilities.
Multi-national Defense System ProjectScenario: Large system acquisition project threatened to be halteddue to the cost and complexity of the application integration tasks,made more challenging by extremely onerous security requirements.
Software Engineering Solution
SituationOptical Networking venture building a new product suiteDistributed, multinational development teamSpeed of software adaptation core to their “value”Needed to wholly control and own their work environmentExisting CASE application could not meet these goals
SolutionRequired a complete Software Engineering PlatformCore System: design environment and code generation systemSupplemented the original CASE tool with an extensibility layer Permitted all stakeholders to participate in the design processDelivered enhanced quality, improved productivity & contextualization of the output software componentsDelivered dramatically improved system documentation
Software Engineering Solution
Key Points:Exposing design content in an “intermediate” XML format permitted a variety of “content processes” to be run that extended the core system behavior by enhancing:- Quality control- Online collaboration- High precision content publishing
Global Case Management System
SituationLarge-scale solution for an Immigration and Citizenship Case Management system supporting global user communityContent Management dimension of the requirements were both very challenging and absolutely essentialInitial concept was to integrate a COTS DM / CMS into the enterprise CRM package and to deploy a hybrid environmentForecasted cost of this integration ran to over $50 Million and serious integration & deployment risks were identified
SolutionRigorous requirements discovery & distillation effort undertakenNumerous alternative architectures were evaluatedBy focusing on the core requirements, introducing a content specification governing interfaces & adding effective content processes – the $50 Million budget was effectively eliminated
Global Case Management SystemKey Points:Addressing the integrationchallenges using an extensibility modeladdressed all of the core needs and permitted a wide range ofparallel requirements to be accommodated at noadditional cost.
The solution embedded content intelligence into theunderlying database and network layers that allowedsophisticated content servicesto be delivered using existingcommercial applications.
Multi-National Defense System Project
SituationVery large NATO Defense System Project Design & development work to be performed across 13 countriesOriginal Collaboration environment depended on a large investment in security applications to facilitate direct access to PDM environment Expenses, incompatibilities between different PDM platforms, and security concerns all became an issue
SolutionContent architecture established for content interchangeSimple CMS developed to act as a “master repository”
Content exported from source PDM to repositoryInterchange protocols / collaboration processes put in placeMulti-level security including content-based measures
Multi-National Defense System ProjectKey Points:Content exported fromProduct Data Managementsystem and an interimmaster repository establishedfor working content. Multiple strategies leveragedto enhance security levels.
MasterRepository
SecurePDM
Stakeholders
Secrets of Success
In each of these three cases:A workable solution emerged by exposing the content being managed and processed within applications
A workable solution emerged by exposing the system logicgoverning the applications as content that could be highly parameterized
Supplemental components processed the exposed content and effectively bridged the gap between different applications and between applications and requirements
The end solutions were very simple to implement and maintain, and provided for ongoing adaptation to address other needs
The Common Ingredient
Content IntegrationExposing the “content” is analogous to reverting to first principles or finding the common denominator when solving a problem
Any impedance between the paradigms governing applications can be addressed by analyzing and processing the exposed content and logic
The content integration interfaces become independent components that can be used to address parallel requirements as they emerge
The common form used to expose all content –informative and processable XML
Content Oriented Architectures
Application Domain
Content Domain
Business Domain
Service
Service
ServiceService
Service
Service
Multiple Application Sources
IndependentRepresentation
OpenStandards
DynamicContentServices
Content Store
Plug & Play
Application Array
The Benefits of Content Oriented Architectures
Indexing
Application
Exporting
Application
Authoring
Application
Importing
Application
Validation
Validator
Update Metadata
Filter
Viewing
ApplicationSimplify Markup
Filter
Achieving application independence, increased system flexibility, improved usability, ...
…by exposing content & adding transformation
filters & validatorsthat solve
incompatibilities
Filter Content
Filter
Enterprise Content Oriented Architecture
Con
trols
Spe
cial
ized
Mod
els
Rul
esInte
grat
e
ConclusionsThere are many reasonsto look more closely at content technologies
One of these is to find better ways to integrate & leverage application investments… this can save precioustime & money for bothpeople & organizations
Parting ThoughtIt’s not so much about managing content with technology as it is about managing technology with content
