An Object-Oriented Framework for Intelligent Product Manuals
In this paper, an Object-Oriented Framework for the generation of electronic technical manuals is presented. First the problem of documentation generation is discussed. The lack of infrastructure and its effect on the documentation development cycle is then analysed. The need for an Object-Oriented framework that will increase the productivity and will ensure a better information system quality is explained. Furthermore, the technologies enabling the development of systems for generating documentation are outlined, and the system architecture and a case study are described. Finally, the expected benefits of employing such systems are discussed.
There are many object oriented languages available, but why you use JAVA in the first place? Thanks.
This question brings up the Microsoft .Net vs. J2EE question. This is because we are not talking about a simple choise on the language but the complete platform that is chosen.
This also includes JSP vs ASP, Java vs C# (or other .net language), IIS (Internet Information Server) or an open choise of web servers etc.
For further discussions on this, search Google on ".net or j2ee". There are a lot of opinions and reasons why one would choose the one or the other.
The final decision on this choise was made based on the fact for Java that there where many available open source, free, or partialy free projects that we would like to include in this implementation such as the Jacarta ORO (Regular Expressions) libraries, the JESS production system (Rules Engine) etc. Also, because I am conviced more by the arguments offered by the Unix + Java communities than the Microsoft ones.
The most well organised industries on the subject of documentation are the aerospace and automotive.
As far as I have seen they produce documentation in CDs not online and they mainly use SGML based tools.
From then on they use software for Simplified English Checking (http://www.boeing.com/phantom/sechecker/)
and translating more than for the actual authoring (http://www.tedopres.nl/Home.1.0.html - http://www.star-group.net/eng/home.html).
Is this product commercially tested?
I suppose there is a close relation between User Management and Web Gateway. Are you using out of the box product for user management, or is it something that you have developed?
One of the main concerns of having the contents online is security. What all security measures do you have to protect the system against any malicious user?
Training the user to use your system, how easy or difficult is it to train a non-technical person.
And finally how would you compare your system to those systems that are being used in technical call centres.
Regards
Not realy, the user management deals with the user models, the web gateway is only providing access to the web and encodes the urls. Both are made for the purpose of this framework.
Security is taken care of by user login and checking of the sessions through the cookies palaced on the users browser. If more security is needed the system can be run on top of ssl.
The output of the system is a web enables technical manual. It does not need any special training but the user may need some time to orientate himself in the sites space.
The call centers are semi automated in the best case. They dont have any integration with the product data. Theu need calified personel and their presentational abilities are very limited compared to a web enabled system.
The paper mentions the extraction of personalised data based on XML. The data are extracted from the XML file/databse based on the User Model and the Rules defined for the Rule Engine. It is not clear what is the way the data are qualified. How are the data categorised ? What are the entities defined in the user model and in what way the rules map the user model to the XML structure ?
The user model includes a set of attributes that the user submits through a html form. The acceptable inputs are not restricted but the system tries to match them to a set of keywords that qualify the user to one of a predifined set of user types.
On the other side (data side) the data are marked according to a taxonomy of knowledge types. These knowledge types can then be mapped to the related user types by the rules in a way that a technician will see technicaly related information etc.
Do you know what software is used by the automotive industries for producing product manuals?