XML 2002 Annotation Management in an XML CMS A Case Study

XML 2002 Who is this guy? David Price – Consultant for Isogen International, LLC – Technical lead on this project – Experienced in content management system implementation, customization, and tool integration – Focused on implementations and practical applications

XML 2002 Presentation Goals To describe an instance of annotation management within a large CMS Demonstrate what can be done with annotating XML, and how To show what it took us, resource and time-wise, to implement it To present lessons that were learned in the development process

XML 2002 What is an annotation? Annotations are a kind of metadata with three distinguishing characteristics: – Fine granularity – Created and viewed outside the normal authoring process – Stored and managed separately from the annotated content

XML 2002 Why manage annotations? Changing / Versioned content Access Controls Speed Special Applications

XML 2002 What does this have to do with XML? XML lends itself particularly well to annotation for several reasons: – Structured content – Human-readable, machine parsable – Existing linking technologies – Broad tool set The system as built exploits these properties

XML 2002 System Requirements A tool for reviewers to add annotations to content over the web A tool for authors to read and respond to annotations made by reviewers Integration of both tools with process workflow

XML 2002 Annotation must work in a versioned environment Limited time frame and resources

XML 2002 Environment Documentum 4i / Oracle as a CMS Arbortext Epic 4.2 as an editor iPlanet 4 as a web application server Custom link management solution

XML 2002 Environment (cont.)

XML 2002 Language Java was decided on as the language of choice for three reasons: – Familiarity with the language – Available APIs and a Java-friendly environment – Availability of Java XML tools

XML 2002 Difficulties In this case, there were only two difficult problems: – Managing the relationship between annotations and content – Integrating annotation management with workflow

XML 2002 Linking == Annotation Any content that is linkable can be annotated Annotation has all of the problems associated with link management

XML 2002 Blah! Blah blah blah blha blhab BLAH! BLAH! Annotation

XML 2002 Architecture & Implementation Annotation Manager Core Annotation Manager GUI Annotation Manager Web

XML 2002 Annotation Manager Core Handles the creation, deletion, modification, and querying of annotations Consists of abstract classes, interfaces, and specific implementations Abstraction of the core was intended to allow multiple back-end implementations, but was only partially successful Poor integration of workflow damaged the abstraction

XML 2002 Web Interfaces A set of Java Servlets that allow access to the annotation manager Provides a web interface to the core components, along with basic access controls Includes a SAX application to transform XML documents within the system into reviewer- friendly HTML on the fly, including transclusions

XML 2002

Java Interfaces A Java Swing application with some Epic-specific customizations Allowed authors to search for and view annotations on the document currently being edited Did not permit editing of the annotation beyond workflow state changes

XML 2002

Project Timeline Project began in Mid-September, 2001 System was substantially complete by mid-October First client review – 17 October 2001 Second client review – 9 November 2001 Code Complete – 19 November 2001 Installed at the client site one week later

XML 2002 Implementation Project started in mid September of 2001 Two core team members, with a third programmer being brought in to write the SAX portion of the web interface

XML 2002 Work was started simultaneously on the Core components and web interfaces. Once the core interfaces were defined, an initial implementation based on MS Access was built, which was used for testing while the Documentum implementation was still in progress A significant amount of this time was devoted to learning the APIs needed to access the CMS

XML 2002 Successes Completed two weeks ahead of schedule Completed under budget Customer was satisfied with product and used it for the duration of the project

XML 2002 Failures Code reusability User interface look and feel Extensibility of system Use of SAX for dynamic rendering of documents Workflow interaction too rigid

XML 2002 Improvements / Extensions Refactor code for re-use and multiple databases Abstract workflow Use XML for annotation content as well Improve user interface Use a more agile development process

XML 2002 Conclusions Adding a customized annotation solution to a CMS is not necessarily a difficult task If a linking solution is in place, the main work of an annotation system is done. Creating an annotation system means creating a link manager More customer interaction is better Workflow might not be as trivial as it seems

XML 2002 Questions & Contact Info David Price