Component Management of XML
September 23, 2003
Back in the day, serious content management meant component-level management of XML elements. This was a carryover from early SGML content management approaches, before the term “content management” had legs. Of course, early “content management” applications were really Web delivery engines (early versions of Vignette come to mind), and some systems now thought of as “content management” were actually document management systems (the aptly named Documentum).
At the time, there were a few technologies that handled component management of SGML data. These included Xyvision's PDM (once an acronym for Parlance Document Manager, and now called Content@), Interleaf's RDM, Chrystal Software's Astoria, and a product from a company called Texcel. (I forget the entire lineage, but somewhere along the way, Interleaf acquired the Texcel technology, and either incorporated it in RDM or began using it as part of a later offering called BladeRunner. Interleaf was then acquired by Broadvision, and the BladeRunner technology—I believe—is now part of what Broadvision calls "One-to-One Publishing.")
I mention this because the need for component-level management of (now) XML is still there, and these technologies still do the job. They are not the only technologies that do the job, anymore. However, it would be interesting to come up with a matrix of detailed requirements for single-source XML-based publishing and see how these technologies fare against other, newer ones. Do they still maintain a technical advantage?
Bill Trippe
btrippe@nmpub.com
Posted by Bill Trippe at September 23, 2003 12:33 PM
