Using Chunked Content

The theory of developing new documents from legacy components is fairly simple, if the repository is implemented properly. First, the designer needs to know what previous training this new training is similar to. This is accomplished by querying the database and seeing what existing content comes fairly close to the current need. If it is completely new and dissimilar from other training, then the designer gets nothing from the repository but templates. Having made a shrewd guess about some other similar training, the designer has to define how this new training is different from the similar training that has been identified.

One method of handling the query process is by a web page containing drop down field list properties. Define 5 or 6 of these and then add in some more specific customizing terms, click submit and get a list back of matching content. It is just like doing a web search, except that the web you are searching is a discrete database. What is returned from the search can take many different forms: FrameMaker document, raw XML, Word document or HTML. When the query results in more "hits" than desired, then you reformulate it to be more specific. If little or nothing results, then you try a more general query until you get the desired results.

The authoring process is iterative, a succession of repetitive operations performed to collect, modify and upload new content.

As time goes by and the authors and production people get used to using the system to produce the required results, productivity increases and frustration decreases. There will be some people who cannot adjust to the new work methods, just as there were some very talented people who could produce marvelous typed documents who could never quite make a word processor work right.

Some authoring environments, such as Epic Editor, work from the data structure to the content. At the beginning, these tools can be difficult for some designers to understand and use efficiently. After the designers become familiar with the database structure, they rapidly learn to navigate through the maze of information they encounter on cross-functional teams to find the parcels they want. In practice, authors working with common, standardized documents rapidly learn what five or six elements they must identify to generate the greater portion of their training. It is more difficult, at the beginning, than cutting and pasting content, but once you get it into your stride, it becomes 10 times faster and easier to do your job. Even in a pure XML environment, designers still find invaluable the ability to easily query the database.

It should be noted here that no content management system can stand in for the designer's knowledge and understanding of the corpus for which training is developed. XML has no real impact upon the analysis or discovery phases of new training development. XML is a set of tools. Having the skills to manipulate those tools does not in and of itself result in training any more than reading a manual makes you an expert.

How the content is organized into new instances is a question of authoring tools, not XML.