An Object-Oriented Framework for Intelligent Product Manuals

C. Pasantonopoulos, S. S. Dimov, R. M. Setchi

Manufacturing Engineering Centre, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

Product Documentation

Moved from Paper Based to Electronic
Has to be Web Enabled
Must provide Integration with existing Information Sources
Needs High Quality Standards

Software Frameworks

Model the Entities of a Specific Domain
Increase Productivity
Ensure Higher Software Quality

Documentation Sub-systems Identified

User Management
Document Component
Rule Engine
PDM Integration
Web Integration
Text Processing

Enabling Technologies

Java Servlets
Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)
eXtensible Markup Language (XML)
Text Pattern Matching (Apache ORO)

System Architecture

User Management = Login Handling, User Model Storage and Management.
Document Component = Data Handling, Report Generation, Basic Component Utilities.
PDM Integration = Data Monitoring, Data Extraction.
Text Processing = Dictionary Management, Data Processing.
Web Integration = Request Processing, Navigation Management, Data Presentation.
Rule Engine Abstraction = Rule Management, Rule Processing.

Case Study

Conclusions

A Framework is presented that models the main concepts of a Documentation System. This framework provides:

A fully functional system.
dynamic updating of the product data presented (PDM Integration).
Personalised output based on processing of XML fragments.
Text Processing for automatic hyperlink generation (Regular Expresions).
An extensible framework that can be enriched with further clases to provide custom solutions.

Further Work

What happens as the selection and processing tasks become more complex ?

Will the framework become over complicated ?

What happens when we want to change the strategies used ?

Do we have to redisign ?

What happens as the product becomes larger ?

How much processing power will we need ?