"An Architectured Solution"

This is what such an architectured solution would look like.
Only now we can develop the technology to fill the blueprint. The advantage of this approach is the limitless extendibility of the solution spectrum.
Standardized and reusable asset formats are the key to manageability!
For such a document application would start with the variable data interface for this is the core asset of the document! NO DATA - NO DOCUMENT! Each application can use its own way to read, acquire or prompt users to provide data variables for business documents. Also this is the key to flexible and simple implementations.
Using the variable data the document is laid out and while many assets may be reused, any number may have to be developed for this application only. They are also stored into the asset library. If a version control process over time is deployed, then many refer to this as a repository. This version control is for production only. Versions for different application shave to be managed with asset names. The only place where such a version control process can be of benefit is when users maintain pieces of text for a common document structure. This separation is achieved through library setups. Once two versions exists they cannot be maintained together in any case.
The formatting engine will be started and uses the asset library and the data interface to generate the standard document format. This is completely printer independent and archive ready containing an index. This also facilitates output management functions. It also facilitates the reuse of these document pages in other applications.
The print services will now take care of the printing and the resource conversion to the printer target format.
You need the output management functions integrated into your business document management environment as many of the control parameters should not be extracted from the printfile, but be created at formatting time and stored which each business document.
Now each document can be managed according to the output management parameters defined in the system tables.

Max Pucher, ISIS Papyrus America max.pucher@isis-papyrus.com

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