1. Document Engineering
Robin Burke
ECT 360

2. Outline
Admin
Quiz + Answers
Document Engineering
In-Class Exercise

3. Admin Project Milestone #2 Project Milestone #3
identify domain for project
supposed to be due last week
no submission link
will be due today
Project Milestone #3
document analysis
due 10/10

4. Quiz
30 minutes

5. Document Engineering Glushko and McGrath coined this term
"a new discipline for specifying, designing and implementing the documents that serve as the interfaces to business processes."
Topic much larger than XML
XML provides a mechanism for the results of such an engineering activity
Central insight
The concept of "document" is very stable and central to many business processes
XML technologies allow systems to consume and produce documents

6. Tasks in Document Engineering
Analyzing the Context
what is the problem to be solved
Analyzing/Design Business Processes
express processes at the level where we can identify documents as input and output
Analyzing/Design Business Transactions
examining the boundaries of processes and seeing what documents go in and out
Analyzing Documents & Components
collecting documents and analyzing their contents
extracting components
Assembling Components & Models
put components together into data models and document models
Implementation
writing XML schemas
writing code that accepts, manipulates and outputs XML

7. In this class Mostly interested in #6 But defining XML languages
writing code
But
languages must come from somewhere
process and content analysis to derive requirements

8. For your project You will select a domain
in which you can find existing documents
assume that the first three steps are complete
you know that these are the important documents to represent
You will try to figure out what about these documents needs to be represented
document analysis

9. Document Analysis Collect representative documents Examine documents
Identify information-bearing components
Identify their role in the relevant business process
Name them
Type them

10. Components Any piece of information that
has a unique label or identifier is a candidate component
is self-contained and comprehensible on its own is a candidate component
A component is a logical unit, with no presentation implied
may be organized structurally

11. Components Just because information is presented as a unit
doesn't mean it is one component
Example
"Robert J. Glushko and Tim McGrath"
Just because information is not presented together
doesn't mean the components should be separate
Depaul University
School of CTI
243 S. Wabash Ave.

12. Hints for Components Spatial features of documents Typography
whitespace
rules
boxes
layout patterns
Typography
font sizes and styles
not always
Proximity
figures and captions
Structure
be careful!
document may not have the right structure
better to pull out internal information components
see if the structure emerges from the analysis

13. What to record Tentative name Type of data
must be tentative; names change frequently
Type of data

14. Example

15. Example 2

16. Example 3

17. Component Harvest For each document
extract components
Do so independently of other documents
lets you identify differences in representation and contents

18. Harvesting

19. Component Consolidation
Examine different sets of harvested components
Look for similarities and differences
Try to resolve differences
Renaming
Structural reorganization
Develop detailed type information
value standardization

20. Standardizing Values Assists in writing schema/DTD
Assists in document processing
BUT
value space not likely to remain constant
too many choices doesn't help
180 countries but do you do business with all of them?
too few choices is also a problem
if the distinctions important to your process can't be captured

21. Naming Names are critical
they communicate what each part of the document is for
Names are the most dynamic part of the analysis
expect them to change several times
useful to have a dictionary nearby
In consolidation
we need to merge synonyms
come up with new names for homonyms
usually best to rename all homonyms

22. Example title (in a lecture series) longer names needed to specify
Is it the title of the talk? The job title of the speaker? The name of the lecture series?
longer names needed to specify
Talk Title
Series Title
Job Title

23. Exercise Each group to get liner notes documents
Produce harvest tables
Produce consolidated table
Switch documents
see how they fit

24. Next week
Schemas
Next project milestone