Common Source Data Base

Last updated November 04, 2024

A Common Source Database (CSDB) is to provide the user (mainly technical authors, illustrators, and publication managers) with automated processes to handle the complete palette of CSDB objects. Technical documentation is used in many areas of the everyday life. Product liability and many other issues regarding consumer protection have to be covered inside technical documentation. At minimum, a drawing including a few locators has to be provided. Much of this information is in accordance with the international S1000D specification.^[1]

Description

A special form of technical documentation is electronic technical documentation, a further subform is interactive electronic technical documentation (IETD). The complexity of IETD especially regarding the huge mass of data elements, their linkage and the version management issuing and release process must be controlled via a special document management system. To handle these complex structures of ASD S1000D IETDs, the Common Source Data Base is necessary.

Starting with the smallest addressable unit, the DataModules under the use of different Document Type Definitions (DTDs) or schemas has to be supported. Furthermore, the publications, in process review forms (IPRFs) in later S1000D versions known as comments, for authoring reasons must be provided. Last but not least the illustrations and all kinds of hotspot declaration files have to be assisted.

Regarding processes to perform the S1000D file-based exchange between customer and/or industry, to generate complete IETDs and to verify all these processes, the CSDB must ensure data integrity and security during all actions listed above.

Support the handling of technical publication

These technical publications consist of DataModules (DMs), Illustrations (ICNs), partly hotspot-declarations and its Info Object instance (IO) or the Publication Module (PM) in later Versions of S1000D. The Info Object instance (XML file, using a special Document Type Definition) consists of DM- and ICN-references to guide the loading process into a retrieval system and to build the table of content, partly the list of applicable publications LOAP.

Connection between exchanging, authoring/illustrating environment and data vault

The basic mechanism is to copy S1000D objects like DMs, IPRFs or Illustrations out of the secured vault of a CSDB into a working area, to avoid that more than one user is able to change the object. After the changes have been performed, the object will be copied back to the CSDB vault and its issue increased.

Furthermore, the CSDB is able to support technical authors or operators with a checking environment. The checks result in standardized files like CSV or plain text, to ensure an easy transfer to the originator of the checked data. The originator may be the technical author during the authoring process or in case of international data exchange in accordance with ASD/AIA S1000D, an industrial partner respective a sub-contractor who delivers documentation.

The checks enclose tests against official documents like:

business rules of the project
guidance documents
style guide documents
S1000D standard and its versions
or starting at the version 2.3 of S1000D, against the business rule exchange DataModule (BREX DM).

Nationalization

If the customer is interested in national/translated and customized documentation out of the common documentation, a nationalization process must be supported of the CSDB.

ASD/AIA S1000D file-based data exchange

Data exchange routines and automatisms are the most important reason to develop a CSDB, to ensure a process reliability. The import and export routines can be fully automated or be performed via CSDB operator.

The components of a Data exchange package are for example:
– one data dispatch note (DDN)
– a certain amount of DataModules (DMs) and
– all illustrations, referenced by the DMs above.

The identifier of a DDN is the (DDN-Id) found within the sgml/xml file and expressed in the filename plus related extension.
The identifier of the DM is the data module code (DMC) found within the sgml/xml file and expressed in the filename plus related extension.
The identifier of the Illustration is the illustration control number (ICN) found within the cgm/tif/mil/cg4/etc. file and expressed in the filename plus related extension.

These packages contain all necessary information to provide the receiver with the necessary information.

Query and search

The CSDB must provide or support the complete Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) process with its information. Thus detailed query and search masks have to be delivered.

A good solution may be to use commercial off-the-shelf database products to implement business logic. The CSDB must be able to handle all file formats given by the actual version of S1000D.

Work Flow Component

To implement all kinds of authors and illustrators work including all supporting processes like validation and production of IETD the CSDB used by AIRBUS Defence and Space supports workflow engines and offers standardized interfaces to import and export data.

Related Research Articles

A document type definition (DTD) is a specification file that contains set of markup declarations that define a document type for an SGML-family markup language. The DTD specification file can be used to validate documents.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Serialization</span> Conversion process for computer data

In computing, serialization is the process of translating a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored or transmitted and reconstructed later. When the resulting series of bits is reread according to the serialization format, it can be used to create a semantically identical clone of the original object. For many complex objects, such as those that make extensive use of references, this process is not straightforward. Serialization of objects does not include any of their associated methods with which they were previously linked.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Standard Generalized Markup Language</span> Markup language

The Standard Generalized Markup Language is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on two postulates":

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The World Wide Web Consortium's XML 1.0 Specification of 1998 and several other related specifications—all of them free open standards—define XML.

DocBook is a semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software, but it can be used for any other sort of documentation.

Adobe FrameMaker is a document processor designed for writing and editing large or complex documents, including structured documents. It was originally developed by Frame Technology Corporation, which was bought by Adobe.

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards is a nonprofit consortium that works on the development, convergence, and adoption of projects - both open standards and open source - for Computer security, blockchain, Internet of things (IoT), emergency management, cloud computing, legal data exchange, energy, content technologies, and other areas.

In computing, configuration files are files used to configure the parameters and initial settings for some computer programs or applications, server processes and operating system settings.

A numeric character reference (NCR) is a common markup construct used in SGML and SGML-derived markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represents a single character. Since WebSgml, XML and HTML 4, the code points of the Universal Character Set (UCS) of Unicode are used. NCRs are typically used in order to represent characters that are not directly encodable in a particular document. When the document is interpreted by a markup-aware reader, each NCR is treated as if it were the character it represents.

This article describes the technical specifications of the OpenDocument office document standard, as developed by the OASIS industry consortium. A variety of organizations developed the standard publicly and make it publicly accessible, meaning it can be implemented by anyone without restriction. The OpenDocument format aims to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats.

S1000D is an international specification for the procurement and production of technical publications. It is an XML specification for preparing, managing, and publishing technical information for a product. It was initially developed by the AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD) for use with military aircraft. Since Issue the scope has been extended to include land, sea and even non-equipment products. It is widely used in civil as well as military products. S1000D is part of the S-Series of ILS specifications.

A Formal Public Identifier (FPI) is a short piece of text with a particular structure that may be used to uniquely identify a product, specification or document. FPIs were introduced as part of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and serve particular purposes in formats historically derived from SGML. Some of their most common uses are as part of document type declarations (DOCTYPEs) and document type definitions (DTDs) in SGML, XML and historically HTML, but they are also used in the vCard and iCalendar file formats to identify the software product which generated the file.

Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages which mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated.

A component content management system (CCMS) is a content management system that manages content at a granular level (component) rather than at the document level. Each component represents a single topic, concept or asset.

Shipdex is a collection of international business rules developed to standardize and improve the production and the exchange of technical information between equipment makers, shipyards and ship-owners according to international S1000D specifications already in use for about 30 years in the military sector and adopted more recently by Civil aviation. It enables equipment manufacturers and shipyards to structure, write and deliver technical manuals, and to load ERP and CMM systems with technical manual contents into a standardized electronic format, making them much easier to produce and manage, compared to traditional methods of writing technical manuals using a word processor.

A document type declaration, or DOCTYPE, is an instruction that associates a particular XML or SGML document with a document type definition (DTD). In the serialized form of the document, it manifests as a short string of markup that conforms to a particular syntax.

References

↑ Kostogryzov, Andrey; Korolev, Victor (2020-04-15). Probability, Combinatorics and Control. BoD – Books on Demand. p. 140. ISBN 978-1-83880-103-8.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Kostogryzov, Andrey; Korolev, Victor (2020-04-15). Probability, Combinatorics and Control. BoD – Books on Demand. p. 140. ISBN 978-1-83880-103-8.

[1]