1. Publishing and Devolving the Maintenance of a Prospectus Paul Browning University of Bristol (paul.browning@bris.ac.uk)

2. Motivation Expedite the process and re-use information Separate the design from the content On-line prospectus should become the authoritative version Printed version should be derivative - a snapshot of the on-line version Maintenance of the information should be devolved (improve transparency)

3. Before …. Collation/updating of the course information from departments and services Preparation of the combined text using word-processing/desk-top publishing tools Dispatch of the text for printing Reverse engineering text into a Web- deliverable version

4. After…. Updating via Web-forms of course information held in databases BY departments and services Web-deliverable version produced instantly and automatically Monolithic file produced from databases - imported by desk-top publishing tools Dispatch of the text for printing

5. One solution FileMaker Pro V4 (http://www.filemaker.com/) Inexpensive, multi-platform, runs over TCP/IP Works out of the box - no learning cliff Web companion plug-in - first database published inside 5 minutes CGI-type stuff and CDML if you want to get your hands dirty

6. Starting point Paper prospectus Spot the pattern - design the databases Used Perl filters on marked up Word documents to generated tab-separated files for import into databases

7. Designing the pages Based on existing on-line version By separating design from content reduced pages from ~400 to ~10 Two sets of pages –for the reader (pretty) –for the editor (forms-based, not pretty)

8. A CDML Primer Claris Dynamic Markup Language Four sorts of tags –standard HTML input types (e.g. Text, Select, Submit) –Action (e.g. -Find, -New, -Edit) –Variable (e.g. -DB, -Format, -Error) –Replacement (e.g. [FMP-Field], [FMP-If], [FMP-Include])

9. Problems Heterogeneous legacy data Loss of flexibility Text-only

10. Issues Non-standard? Performance? Will it scale? Cacheing?

11. Where next? Protocol/mechanism for updating Incorporating images Undergraduate prospectus Integrating other data sources (e.g. personnel, unit catalogue)