Hi Joel,
I received this as a member of
the Pharma group and thought it might help to fill you in on the current work
going on in the BusDocs group.
We are focused on two broad
areas:
·
Business Document
Structural Model
o
Aggregated authoring
of topics is the first issue here. We are working on requirements and
recommendations to support interoperability between:
§
An “aggregated
document” which combines all topics together for editing, and
§
Individual storage
and editing of the topics that comprise the aggregated document and a DITA map
that represents the aggregated document.
o
Other very broad structural
requirements of business documents that we are examining include:
§
How the DITA <topic>
relates to a business document component and how DITA’s nesting of topics
is best implemented for component flow, storage, and reuse
§
The ability to see/manipulate
table of contents/table of figures/table of tables while authoring
§
The ability to apply
specific numbering to headings and lists while authoring
§
Recommendation for
handling multiple rows of repeating table headers
§
Recommendation for
handling multiple note types: footnotes/endnotes/table notes
§
Etc., etc.
Based
on our research, these are broad issues that relate to business documents
across most industries. Our goal is to work through these types of requirements
in the hopes that the DITA Technical Committee can provide “universal”
business document recommendations. This will remove the need for each industry
subcommittee to invest duplicate efforts and it will establish a more
interoperable business document structural model.
·
Business Document Semantic
Metamodel
As you
saw in the presentation, the other area of the subcommittee’s work addresses
the semantic metamodel. Some of our members are very focused on information
modeling, and brought this experience to the subcommittee. I think DITA is the
best XML standard to combine ease-of-use for the author with an architecture
that can support an enterprise information model, and appreciate the experience
these members have in defining information types. They are currently working on
the abstract model represented in the presentation. When that model is
sufficiently vetted, the next activity would be to understand options for the technical
implementation of the model within DITA.
Ultimately,
it may not be possible for our subcommittee to come up with an semantic model
that can be adopted as broadly as a structural model can be. The semantic model
may be too general for some organizations, and too specific for others—that
is the nature of information modeling. Regardless, is should provide waypoints for
organizations who want to do similar modeling, and guidance from the Technical
Committee on how to implement information models with DITA.
I hope this information is
helpful and would appreciate understanding how you and others on the Pharma
subcommittee view any synergies between our work.
Regards,
Michael
Michael Boses
Director, XML Products
Quark Inc.
970 Lake Carillon Dr. Suite 310
St. Petersburg, FL 33716
Phone: 727.235.6803
mboses@quark.com
Co-Chair OASIS DITA for Enterprise Business Documents
Subcommittee
http://wiki.oasis-open.org/dita/BusDocs
From: Joel Finkle
[mailto:Joel.Finkle@imagesolutions.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 10:46 AM
To: dita-pharma@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: MBrenna3@its.jnj.com; Laura.Zupko@gsk.com;
Martin.Sjoholm@astrazeneca.com; David.H.Brown@astrazeneca.com; thomas.brunner@novartis.com;
janet.stoltenborg@astrazeneca.com; peter_civitarese@merck.com;
Monica.Mehta@genzyme.com; Brooke.Hinkson@genzyme.com;
averbacj@ls-integration-partners.com
Subject: [dita-pharma] Extend Enterprise Business Documents toward
Pharma?
I just stumbled upon another DITA subcommittee's
documentation, that of Enterprise Business Documents. There's a great
presentation at
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/36620/Business%20Content%20Metamodel-1.pptx
The document types they're working on are certainly
different from regulatory submission documents, for the most part, but I can
see that a company that already has its HR documents, policies and procedures,
etc. built on this should be able to start extending into regulatory
documentation.
This may help us frame the kinds of extensions to the DITA
model that we will need for things such as protocols, reports, etc.
On the other hand, this may steer us into thinking in terms
of extension to their data types (Event and Governance, for instance, sound
useful) but might be dead ends in terms of creating our kinds of documents. At
its worst, companies might say that you can't build a DITA-based protocol
without having DITA-based SOPs, DITA-based Policies, etc. etc. which could slow
down acceptance.
In any case, it's worth a read.
Joel
----
|
Joel Finkle |
||
|
Director, Regulatory
Informatics |
||
|
|
|
Image Solutions, Inc. |
|
100 South Jefferson Road |
||
|
Whippany, NJ 07981 |
||
|
T: 847.989.6028 |
||
The
information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it
is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any
review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action
in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the
intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact
the sender and delete the material from all computers.