1. Click to edit Master title style © 2006 IBM Corporation Connecting the dots: Relationships and relevance with DITA maps Presented by Erik Hennum, IBM User Technology

2. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 2 The roster of OASIS document standards Each standard creates a different kind of document content Styled content – Open Document Format (ODF) / Text Documents for authoring the presentation intent with the content Structured narrative – DocBook Books or articles with consistent structure Structured content objects – DITA Strongly typed topics that are assembled for a resource

3. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 3 Complementary tools n Differentiated by purpose n Potential to become a comprehensive solution For instance, ODF-based style policies for the elements of structured markup n Requires better interoperability Conversion transforms are an obvious, necessary step Collections of content with multiple formats

4. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 4 DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) Goal of usability for writers and vocabulary designers Not just clarity for processing  Topics – like HTML pages but structured Emphasis on semantic focus, strong typing, and granularity  Maps – like HTML site maps but structured Manage the relationships outside of the topics Hierarchies of topics as well as cross-hierarchy associations  Specialization – like Object Oriented inheritance Extensibility to add XML vocabularies for new kinds of content Specialized instances must be valid for the base XML vocabulary Vocabulary definitions in pluggable modules

5. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 5 DITA maps: the separation of content from context n The map assigns properties and relationships to topics A topic can have different properties and relationships in different maps n Views of overlapping subsets of content Repurposing topics for learning, support, technical marketing, … Reuse and integration of information components Information artifacts that can evolve throughout a workflow n A map can organize other formats besides DITA topics … Hypertext navigation for help or web topicsmap Composition for books use

6. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 6 Integrating your web content – the business value n One lesson of the web – the value of integration Not any single resource but the combination and navigation n The problem with links embedded in content Prevents reuse of content with different links in different contexts Requires changes to content when associations change Difficult to see the big picture because it isn’t represented in any artifact n Instead, maintain the relationships outside of the content Manage the content dependencies Define a clear information architecture regardless of format Identify related descriptions and related things

7. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 7 Integrating web content – an example 1. The map defines the relationships for content in different formats map ODF document DITA topic DocBook article DocBook article...

8. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 8 Integrating web content – an example 1. The map defines the relationships for content in different formats 2. A process pushes the relationships into intermediate files Expresses the relationships as appropriate for the format 3. Standard formatting for the content A light extension to process relationships Alternative: To process in one format, first convert to intermediate DITA topics DocBook article... DITA ODF map ODF document DITA topic DocBook article

9. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 9 Flexible composition of books and other artifacts A DocBook book XYZ Book-specific content......... DocBook section DITA topic merge and process Table of contents Book-specific content Introduction Background... …

10. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 10 Managing your subject matter – the business value n A better user experience by processing the semantics Discover the relevant content Filter the irrelevant content Compose different views of content based on relevance to the user n Improve your content by finding the problems in it Holes in the coverage of your subject matter Content with a blurred focus Duplicate coverage of a subject (no single authoritative resource) n Extend the content and formal semantics in parallel For instance, when you start creating content about a web services offering, define Web Services as a subject

11. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 11 Ingredients for the solution n Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) RDF vocabulary from the W3C Formal concepts and their relationships Fills a hole in the RDF stack between properties and OWL ontologies n DITA taxonomy specialization Extends DITA to provide an authorable XML format for the SKOS model Uses hypertext relationships to specify semantic relationships Demystifies formal semantics Step 1. Define each primary subject in a topic Write a definitional DITA topic that provides SKOS properties like the preferred label, alternate label, scope notes, …

12. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 12 Step 2 (optional): define the subject relationships <subjectdef navtitle="Application server technology"...... <subjectdef navtitle="Service Oriented Architecture"...... taxonomy map Web Services subject topic Application server technology subject topic Service Oriented Architecture subject topic Organize the subjects in a KIND-OF hierarchy with associations

13. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 13 Step 3: classify your documents......... map BPEL User’s Guide DocBook book SOAP Concepts ODF document Web Services subject topic Identify the primary subjects of your content

14. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 14 Generate a queryable RDF representation n XSLT transforms classification from XML to runtime RDF n RDF APIs can query or traverse the SKOS model Web Services A method for interaction... Covers WSDL, SOAP, BPEL,......... BPEL User’s Guide...... Subject definition Content classification

15. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 15 Sample runtime: the SWED facet browser http://www.swed.org.uk/swed/servlet/Entry?action=v Subjects Classified content

16. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 16 Integrating data and discourse – the business value n Hybrid documents are commonplace Real estate appraisals with lot data and descriptive text Medical reports with diagnostic data and observations Service orders with product data and acceptance terms Like word processor documents with form fields but supporting complex structure and semantics n Integrate the Core Component (CCTS) with DITA? DITA 1.1 will enable specialization of data elements CCTS offers a possible source of types for common business data Data compatibility with initiatives like UBL and OAGi?

17. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 17 Integrating data and discourse – pluggability n A DITA document type combines topic type and vocabulary domain modules n A possible direction to explore Wrap the Core Component schemas as a DITA vocabulary domain Offer the Core Component domain as a plugin for DITA document types Standard DITA features apply to the data – such as extension, content fragment reuse, and inherited processing with overrides Contact report topic type Highlighting domain Contact report document type Core Component domain Core Component types

18. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 18 Integrating data and discourse – example... XYZ, Inc Lakeshore Drive... Returning call from... Agreed to... 2006-06-15 Call back to...... Core Component data Specialized DITA discourse

19. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 19 Specialization and interoperability – the worst case Extension in parallel = a fragmented type hierarchy The same problems as OO inheritance without a common base class No sharing of design, processing, or content Interoperability requires a common, unified type hierarchy Topic TaskConcept Section and reference Tutorial DITADocBook

20. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 20 Possible futures for interoperable specialization n Enhance the specialization architecture n Accept many element name aliases for one element type Sensitive to culture or locale For instance accept,, or for the paragraph type (indicated in DITA by a defaulted class attribute containing " topic/p ") n Long term, recognize models common to variant XML expression

21. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 21 Summary n OASIS document standards provide a toolset ODF for styled documents, DocBook for structured narrative, and DITA for structured content objects n DITA maps offer interoperability for multiple formats Integration of content as a coherent web resource Composition of content for a book or other artifact Management of semantics through subject classification n Potential hybrid objects with both data and discourse

22. Document Relationships and Relevance with DITA Maps © 2006 IBM Corporation 22 More about DITA n Learn about DITA DITA Focus Area on XML.org – http://dita.xml.org/ Cover pages – http://xml.coverpages.org/dita.html OASIS Committee – http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita n Talk about DITA Join the dialog on the DITA forum – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/ n Download the DITA Open Toolkit http://sourceforge.net/projects/dita-ot/ Taxonomy specialization available as a plugin