Office Automation

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Office Automation Intranets

• BUSS 909

Lecture 4 Media and Document Architectures
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Notices 1

• a new Tutorial has been added called T3
  330-430- see the list on my door for membership
• three students have put their name into two
  classes (2169927, 2291447, 2077644) please
  correct this
• students requesting changes should find a person
  to swap with and then both students should let me
  know- ASAP!

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Notices 2

• An extension has been granted for Assignment 1-
  it was due 2/4/01 Week 5 but is now due 9/4/01
  Week 6
• primarily because we have some late enrolling
  students who are still finalising topics
• some students have recently changed topics- I am
  extremely reluctant to change topics due to lack
  of source materials
• does not affect subsequent due date for
  assignments!

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Agenda 1

• the application we will discuss this lecture is
  document management which fits with OA used to
  support office workflow
• Document management is a good example of an
  application well-suited to client/server- many of
  the core processes can be applied to intranets in
  organisations

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Agenda 2

• for OA and Intranets- it is necessary to be able
  to analyse the types of documents that are used
  in an office
• over the next few lectures will discuss the
  media, elements, markup, documents, document
  types, stylesheets and database publishing that
  can constitute modern OA and web-based intranets

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Agenda 3

• Classification of different types of media can be
  found in Gibbs and Tsichritzis (1995) Reading 3
  Media Types 15-77-
• this is also a good reading for Lecture 11

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Media Convergence Diversification
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Media Convergence

• convergence is a term used to describe the coming
  together of all communication and computing
  devices- as described by Nicholas Negroponte (MIT
  Media Labs)
• separate media (eg/ television) are being merged
  into digital form over time (the computer
  provides the means for this functionality)

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Media Convergence

• recall that most OA development occurred in the
  mid-1970s to late 1980s
• OA contributed to digital convergence by
• using client/server architectures
• setting the stage for developments in CSCW and
  Groupware (described in Lecture 3)
• promoting the use of Compound Document
  Architectures (CDAs), SGML etc

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Media Convergencec. 1994
Multimedia Drives Playstations HDTV
teleputer PDAs Dynabooks Internet
Media television film music, print
Multimedia Enhanced Music CDs Electronic
Books Interactive Movies
Video Servers Interactive Advertisements Home
shopping
Consumer Electronics and Computing
Telecomms information structure switching,
routing
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Media Convergencec. 2005
Interactive Advertisements Interactive
Multimedia Videogames Enhanced Music Interactive
Movies Enhanced Books Electronic
Publishing HDTV Remote Shopping Videophones Groupw
are Teleconferencing Surrogate (Virtual)
Travel Consumer Infotainment Edutainment Virtual
Reality
Hypermedia
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Media Convergencewrt Implementation

• Negroponte predicts that the computer will become
  an information appliance
• systems which represent early attempts to
  implement an information appliance include
• Apple Computer- iMac

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Media Convergencewrt Implementation

• there is no agreement on what an information
  appliance will look like
• Replace your television with a computer or vice
  versa?
• Buy a new set-top box sitting to sit beside your
  Home Entertainment Unit?
• Will information be carried over cable, telephone
  lines, or airwaves?
• Will you buy computation like electricity?

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Media Diversification 1

• at the same time as media convergence is
  occurring- everything is becoming digital ...
• new forms of digital information are being
  created and added to existing services all the
  time- media diversification
• eg/. WWW has an extensible approach to adding the
  ability to use new media types

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Media Diversification 2

• determining the type of elements that could be in
  HTML files is complex
• new browser plug ins are made available fo new
  media (the BUSS909 Intranet pages) will soon have
  links at a large number of plug-ins- some of
  which will be unfamiliar to you

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Media Diversification 3

• servers add a header to each document that tells
  the browser the type of file it is sending
• the browser determines how to handle the file
  based on that information- whether to display the
  contents in the window or to launch an
  appropriate plugin or helper application

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Media Diversification 5

• the system for communicating media types
  (Niederst 1999, 61) resembles Multipurpose
  Internet Mail Extension or MIME which was
  developed for sending attachments in email
• the server needs to be configured to recognize
  each MIME type in order to successfully
  communicate the media type to the browser

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Media Diversification 6Changing nature of the
document

• having documents in digital form is one thing,
  but this is useless if the information is locked
  inside them and inaccessible- need to transform
  documents into information
• this has led to fundamental changes in what
  constitutes a document, and its organisation to
  facilitate information retrieval

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Media Diversification 7Hypertext

• Major advances have been made in media types and
  modes of access used in documents- distinctions
  classify between Hypertext, Multimedia
  Hypermedia
• Hypertext-
• generally consist of one or more text oriented
  media at the nodes
• uni- or bi-directional links between nodes
• asynchronous accessing of nodes

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Media Diversification 8Hypertext
Components of various media types
Anchor
Link
Source Hardman, Bulterman van Rossum (1994)
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Media Diversification 9Multimedia

• generally consist of many types of media at the
  nodes (video, sound, text and images)
• uni- or bi-directional links between nodes
• synchronous accessing of individual nodes but
  asynchronous accessing between nodes

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Media Diversification 10Multimedia
Time
Components of various media types
Anchor
Link
Source Hardman, Bulterman van Rossum (1994)
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Media Diversification 11Hypermedia

• combination of hypertext and multimedia
• nodes consist of many types of media (video,
  sound, text and images)
• uni- or bi-directional links between nodes
• asynchronous or synchronous accessing of
  individual nodes depending on media type
• but asynchronous accessing between nodes

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Media Diversification 12Hypermedia
Components of various media types
Anchor
Link
Source Hardman, Bulterman van Rossum (1994)
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Documents Elementshttp//www.capv.com/dss/resou
rces/glossary/list.htm
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Documents ElementsDefinitions

• Document is an organized collection of
  information (which may contain one or more
  elements) for human consumption, regardless of
  media.
• Element is a basic, tagged component of a
  document (term developed in SGML and commonly
  used elsewhere)

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Document Decomposition

• In order to be able to create an OA system, you
  need to know the structure and function of
  documents and how they relate to business
  processes
• Document Decomposition involves breaking down or
  disassembling a document into its constituent
  elements before putting it into a repository
  system.

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Granularity

• How small a bite of a document a system can
  manage?
• Can your document management system manage
  anything smaller than an entire file?
• Does it know about and manage the elements of
  documents found within files, such as paragraphs
  and sections?

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Granularity

• these are questions about granularity
• the term itself implies that there is a continuum
  in how fine an element a system can manage
• In fact, systems either can or cannot look inside
  a document file. If it can, then it's extremely
  likely that it can handle any size element.

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Content

• Content is what is inside a document, abstracted
  from its format or appearance
• the content of this document involves principles
  and definition used in actual OA systems
• regardless of whether these have been highlighted

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MarkupDefinition

• Codes inserted into a document to indicate its
  formatting or structure
• Mark up systems may require authors to
• insert markup codes by hand
• let the author press a function key and the
  system automatically inserted it, or
• they may hide the codes from the viewer but
  instead showed their effect- WYSIWYG.

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MarkupProcedural

• two types of markup- Procedural and Declarative
• Procedural markup inserts codes that have
  immediate effect.
• eg./ "ltBgt" might turn on bolding until a "lt/Bgt"
  is encountered.

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MarkupDeclarative

• paragraphs and other elements are tagged with an
  identifier (e.g. a name) and applies formats
  defined for elements with that identifier
• eg./ the start of a paragraph might have a "para"
  and format it according to the rules established
  by the author (via a style sheet perhaps) for
  elements named "para."

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• lt!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//SoftQuad//DTD HoTMetaL
  PRO 4.019971010extensions to HTML 4.0//EN"
• "hmpro4.dtd"gt
• ltHTMLgt
• ltHEADgt
• ltTITLEgtBUSS909 Main Screenlt/TITLEgt Informatio
  n which is not
• ltMETA HTTP-EQUIV"expires" CONTENT"0"gt
  displayed in the browser
• lt/HEADgt
• ltBODY BGCOLOR"000080" TEXT"FFFFFF"
  LINK"FF0080" VLINK"8000FF"
• ALINK"FF0000"gt
• lt!-- BUSS909 Title --gt
• ltTABLE BGCOLOR"000000" WIDTH"0"
  BORDER"BORDER"gt
• ltTRgt
• ltTD WIDTH"69" BGCOLOR"000000"gtltIMG
  SRC"uow.gif" ALT"UOW Crest" WIDTH"60"
  HEIGHT"73"gtlt/TDgt
• ltTD WIDTH"377" BGCOLOR"000000"gtltFONT
  FACE"Impact" COLOR"FFFFFF" SIZE"4"gt

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Desktop Publishing/WPApplication of Markup
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Desktop Publishing (1)

• a term coined by Paul Brainerd, founder of Aldus
  (PageMaker) around 1985.
• refers to the use of inexpensive desktop
  technology to accomplish what previously required
  very expensive, proprietary publishing systems to
  accomplish
• previous commercial publishing systems replaced
  light tables and hot wax used to arrange parts of
  documents into pages

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Desktop Publishing (2)

• the first DTP systems were so rigidly page-based
  that if an article couldn't fit entirely onto one
  page, the user would have to cut and paste the
  overflow manually
• DTP is the opposite of WP since the latter so
  completely automated page layout that authors had
  little control over the look of the document

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Desktop Publishing (3)From WP and DTP to DMS

• today, word processors and DTP overlap
• many authors find their WPs more than adequate
  for achieving good-looking pages, and
• DTP continues to be used primarily on
  highly-designed documents that are ready for
  their final layout
• there is now a new movement...

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Desktop Publishing (4)From WP and DTP to DMS

• the new (compound) document management systems
  (DMS) try to avoid investing in labor that cannot
  be reused
• authors create content which are automatically
  composed into the required outputs
• adjusting for format, medium and content
  appropriately, and
• are then reused by readers

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Desktop Publishing (5)Difficulties with DTP...

• the new document management systems focus on the
  information in the document and apply formatting
  information based on that information
• DTP does not fit comfortably in this model
  because it is focused not on information but on
  presentation,
• once a document is laid out using DTP software,
  it cannot easily be reused

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Desktop Publishing (5)Difficulties with DTP...

• if you can recover the text and graphics from a
  DTP document, all the work of the designer is
  lost
• while DTP definitely has a role in such systems,
  it would be a mistake to base such a system
  around DTP software

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Compound Document Architectureshttp//www.capv.co
m/dss/resources/glossary/list.htm
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Compound Document Architectures

• Compound Document Architectures describe and
  permit the manipulation of document components of
  different data types by software applications
• Some compound document architectures limit data
  types. (See OLE, OpenDoc, DOM)

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Compound Document Architectures Compound Document
Management

• documents can contain many different types of
  data, text, drawings, photos, multimedia, etc.
  which are live in that they still carry with
  them the information required to edit or reuse
  them
• compound document management systems manage both
  revisable and non-revisable information

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Compound Document Architectures Configuration
Management Systems (1)

• documents can be considered as having parts that
  can be reused in certain circumstances
• these parts need to be carefully analysed in an
  organisation
• configuration management tracks the relationships
  between the parts. Systems that know which pieces
  are used where, even-or especially-if some parts
  are used in more than one place.

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Compound Document Architectures Configuration
Management Systems (2)

• if an element changes, the system knows all the
  documents incorporating the element are out of
  date- revision or version control
• it then takes some action such as alerting
  authors or readers or updating each affected file
  automatically
• enable documents to be built from bills of
  materials- a list of elements and data required
  to reproduce the document

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Database Publishinghttp//www.capv.com/dss/resour
ces/glossary/list.htm
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Database Publishing

• organisation has information stored in corporate
  databases
• a set of targeted documents are to be produced
  that vary only in data drawn from that database
• the process is automated so that data is drawn
  from the database
• information is inserted into the correct
  locations in the publications

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Database Publishing

• this can range from for example
• very simple Form Letters in which only the
  return address and name vary, to
• very complex four-color retail catalogs created
  on-demand, varying according to recipient's
  interests, area of the country, buying habits,
  and credit history

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Database Publishing

• this might sound like simple form letters or
  receipts with which you will already be familiar
• but the major difference with database publishing
  is that the data extracted from the database
  determines other conditional aspects of the
  document
• these include...

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Database Publishing

• information If its in Queensland, add a
  warning about the need for sun block
• document design If the customer is older than
  65, increase the font size so they can read it
• packaging If its going to someone under 15,
  include a free game

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Database PublishingDocument Management Systems

• manage collections of documents
• aid in the creation storage, manipulation
  retrieval, assembly, or delivery of documents
• minimum requirement for a document management
  system is a check-in/check-out library service

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Database PublishingDocument Management Systems

• typically packaged with a set of text oriented
  tools to manipulate documents, including text
  retrieval, workflow, formatting, and editing
• also designed to manage the capture, storage,
  retrieval, and routing of non-revisable images
  typically scanned document pages

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Database PublishingAssets or Component Management

• Asset oriented manage document assets or page
  description language files for either print or
  electronic output (on-demand printing)
• Component oriented manages document objects or
  components as well as document structures as
  separate entities and are not restricted by file
  system boundaries

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Database PublishingDocument Conversion Systems

• systems that convert document information from
  one format to another, including OCR, markup
  language, formatting language, or page
  description language conversion
• necessary in order to prepare existing legacy
  documents for Document Management Systems

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Database PublishingDocument Interoperability
Standards

• standards that facilitate the sharing of document
  content, structure, and processing information
  between document management applications and
  other applications between multiple document
  repositories, and among network and distributed
  object architectures.
• DMA, ODMA, CORBA, SGML

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Next Week

• this week, we have seen that OA Intranets use
  many types of media and are expected to cope with
  the creation of new forms of media
• next week, we describe SGML which is the
  technological link between OA Systems and
  intranet technologies (including HTML, XHTML, XML
  and the Web)