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This paper reports on work initiated through the STEP standard task group, Product Documentation (ISO 184/SC4/WG3/T14), and is aimed at the integration of two of the most prominent and important information technologies encompassed by standards efforts. These are the areas of product data and product documentation and the results and recommendations reported on here are aimed at harmonizing the use and application of the international standards covering these areas:
This paper addresses the functionalities of these two families of standards(1) with the intention of providing configuration support for the processes of authoring and publishing technical product documentation.
Within the STEP movement, the Product Documentation task group T14 is focusing on the discussions concerning the integration of the STEP and SGML standards and their working environments. This group is especially of interest for those who have a vital interest in integrated solutions for the management of product data and product documentation.
Furthermore, this document is targeted toward business managers, information technology managers, and solution architects in order to stimulate the use of standards-based approaches for management of information as an asset to an enterprise.
This document consists of the following sections:
The Problem Domain points out the problems of the authoring and publishing environments for technical documentation. It lists the infrastructure requirements concerned with integrating the concurrent processes of creating and maintaining product data and product documentation.
Configuration Controlled Authoring and Editing defines the business context for new ways of creating and managing technical documentation. A product model driven data management environment is developed showing the fundamental integration infrastructure to support SGML-encoded information. It also introduces the basic infrastructure concepts of information objects and information object classes as the technical foundation for creating, modelling, and integrating the processes of authoring and editing.
STEP & SGML Interoperability Requirements provides a basic introduction to STEP and SGML in respect to the languages, models, and instantiation of user data. Furthermore, levels of interoperability between the STEP and SGML domains are identified.
Semantic Information Types introduces the concept of Information Types, Information Mapping, and the concept of the Information Object as the basis for reusable information between product design, authoring, and publishing.
SGML Representation & SGML_String provides the basic scope and context for formal specification work, the breakdown structure for the various domains of information modelling being involved, as well as conveying some basic details and examples to stimulate the ongoing discussions.
References provide a list of references to literature on which this document is based.
Glossary defines common terms being used in this document.
(1) The term "family" suits the STEP standards which have been written as a co-ordinated effort with base standards supporting a hierarchy of application standards. When "family" is applied to SGML it is used to associate other independent but related standards such as ISO 10744 HyTime, and ISO 10179 Document Style Semantics and Specification Language (DSSSL). The appendix includes a section on the relations in these two families of standards.