PG WEEKNAPPLIGATION DEVELOPMENT SEPTEMBER 3, 1990 This is the second. article in a series on text manage- ment and tts influence tn. the corporate environment. In the 1980s the need to manage and re: trieve data— general ledger, purchasing, in- ventory, order entry, and so on—was met by database-management systems (DBMSs). Now that corpora- tions understand how effectively they can use computerized data, they're turning their attention to managing textual information. As opposed to data, text comprises memos, E-mail messages, correspon- dence, manuals, articles and journals. Text management as illustrated in the figure refers to the maintenance and retrieval of text and its associated im- ages. It emphasizes the content of the text items, rather than its format or structure. This emphasis on content is why text. management doesn't lend itself to traditional DBMS technology. DBMS re- trieval is oriented to values in records and fields that are matched against the guery criteria; those that match are returned. 5 OGueries against a text collection are oriented to content. Words contained in the text items are matched against; words used in a search criteria. But. that's where the similarity in guery ca- pabilities end. A match in a text item does not automatically determine that the text item is relevant. If a search phrase ap- pears only once, the retrieved docu- APPLIED INTELLIGENCE ment. may be irrelevant, and users can't afford to spend valuable time sorting through irrelevant, documents. Computerized information systems usually deal with fixed-length data. In- formation about. the data is embedded in the struetural design. of the-applica- ion, and the rules concerning data ma- text seem deceptively straightforward: Lecate what's relevant. Text Management's Mission: Locate What's Relevant division has been assigned a major product update. The design and pro- In reality, this involves many steps and duction changes are relatively straight: many variations. One user might simply want to browse through the text, another might want to incorporate a piece of a document:into.-a-memo-or-a-report;and another might just want to file an inter- The Varlous Processes of Text Management The ultimate goal of d text-maragerenl systeH ls easy retrieval of relevant texl. Machlne readable documents nipulation are necessarily rigid, both to ensure the integrity of the data and to facilitate processing, If the information doesn't fit into the pigeonholes established by the database design, it's often discarded. This problem can be avoided as text-management; sys- tems continue to evolve. Users' objectives when dealing with PE—U HRRIIKK RAJE k gore tedljes om; ? Extetital documehts John Avaklan esting document for later use. In addition, the way people deal with text differs from person to person— there's no standard pattern. To cope with these differences, text management must provide search and retrieval meth- odologies that are both intelligent and flexible. z Consider the following scenario: Your '. demand. The concepts in this article are de- forward, but revising the associated documentation will reguire dispropor- tionate effort. Is-there an effective way to isolate all sections of the reference, mainte- nance and user manuals that will be affected by the proposed improve- ments? Or will every paragraph on ev- ery page need to be checked? What will this additional time cost? How long will it take? The use of text-management technol- ogy could provide methods for effi- ciently and effectively handling this seemingly overwhelming task. If the manuals were in machine-readable form, they could be indexed, and a full-text search could be performed us- ing words and phrases that reflect the nature of the changes. If the reference, maintenance and user manuals were generated using document-assembly technology, the af- fected sections of those manuals could easily be identified. Document-assem- bly technology facilitates the manage- ment of small sections of text that are used in more than one document. The resulting document is generated on scribed in a new volume, Text Man- agement, of The James Martin Re- port Series. For more information on this volume, call (617) 639-1958. For information on seminars, con- tact (in the United States and Cana- da) Technology Transfer Imstitute, 741 10th St., Santa Monica, Calif. 90402 (213) 394-8305. In Europe, contact Savant, 2 New St., Carnforth, Lancs., LA5 9BX United Kingdom (0524) 734 505. Continued from Page 65 data-manipulation features. KES users welcomed the arrival of graphics for the expert-system shell. "Our end users are often naive about technology, and in some cases are compu- terphobic," said Jacgueline Haynes, vice president of Intelligent Automation Inc. an industrial automation and training sys- tems company in Rockville, Md. "The Win- dows environment is just a clearer and less ambiguous user interface" Haynes' firm used KES to build an expert system that helps, educational administrators plan programs for handicapped students. 'To speed development, KES 3.0 also pro- vides templates for commonly used rule contructs, such as "if.,. then." With this feature, users need only fill in the template blanks to build rules. Unlike some expert systems that offer template capabilities, KES lets developers easily mix templates with custom rules written with the KES language, according KES Verston 3.0 Sports a GUT to company officials and users. "One of the things] always want is the flexibility to go back and do it myself," Haynes said. "I really object to systems where you can't get out and hack it on your own." To provide more programming muscle for users writing KES code, version 3.0 adds a new debupging feature that lets users set break points within code to stop program execution at preset intervals. In addition, a new browse feature lets devel. opers examine several parts of their appli- cation sitmullaneously, Florian said. The new version, available on 68 hard: ware platforma, also adds data-manipula- tion fentures: A pattern:matching func- tion can be employed to extract and act upon specific: types of data, and a new data type leta users establish direct rela- tionships between two sets of recorda. KES 3.0 pricing ranges from $4,000 to $60,000, depending on the hardware plat: form and operating.system reguirementa. Software AE can be reached at (703) 276-7910.8 EdenSoft'! Windows Uttlitles Continued from Page 65 "(Resource Workshop] is a lot better than the Microsoft tools," said Ira Bibbero, vice president of United Data Corp., a San Francisco-based developer of Windows connectivity programs and a user of Re- source Workshop. "Its easier to create a [Windows] dialogue and then get it to look the way you want." When stacked against comparable tools in the Microsoft SDK, each Resource Workshop component also has advan- tages, according to Eden. For example, . the editor used to create icons, bit maps, fonts and cursors offers paint program: type features. In addition, Microsoft's edi- tor delivers only one mode—the close-up Fat Bits mode—for graphics work, whereas Resource Workshop offers a range of resolutions and two separate views, he said. 8 Resource Workshop also provides three specialized editors that the Microsoft SDK lacks: a menu editor, an editor for charac- ter strings, and an editor for creating hot keys and keyboard eguivalents. Integration between the modules is an- other benefit of Resource Workshop, Eden said. All the tools run under Windows, and the resource editor is integrated with the resource compiler. This allows for incre- mental compilation, ensuring that when a resource element is modified, it is auto- matically recompiled. To develop Windows applications, Re- source Workshop must be used with Microsoft, SDK. Other capabilities of Resource Work: shop include functions in the dialogue edi- tor to manipulate, group and align con: trols such as radio buttons; a project-view mode for managing the files and resources ofan application; and features that ensure changes are reflected in the updated re- source source code without destroying comments and symbols made in the origi- nal code. . EdenSoft, based in Berkeley, Calif., can be reached at (4165) 548-3554. 8