POET-Based SGML Publishing System Debuts

POET Helps Medical Publisher F.A. Davis Build First-of-Its-Kind Document Management and Electronic Distribution System Around POET ODBMS

SAN MATEO, Calif., April 14, 1997 -- POET Software Corporation today announced that medical publisher F.A. Davis has begun deployment of a first-of-its-kind SGML publishing system co-developed by the two companies. Using the POET object database as its central repository, the system will enable F.A. Davis to more effectively manage their intellectual property and deliver it electronically.

Nearly two years in development, the new system lets F.A. Davis load all its book manuscripts into a central repository, allows its editors, authors and reviewers to work on them on- or off-line, create work flow tailored for each title, and distributes them through an Internet-based delivery system. F.A. Davis will use the system first for its best-selling title, "Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary," now available in its 18th edition, as well as other large reference works the company publishes.

"F.A. Davis needed an ODBMS that would let them create databases automatically from the inherent SGML structure of their documents, that could integrate easily with their development tools and other software and provide the functionality and performance to support this groundbreaking effort," said Dirk Bartels, president and CEO of POET Software. "But just as importantly, they needed a database vendor who understood what they were talking about."

F.A. Davis approached a number of object-oriented database vendors to discuss their needs for a publishing system, but in most cases was referred to value-added resellers (VARs) who didn't really understand the publisher's requirements.

"What really helped me make the decision to go with POET was their willingness to work with us on this project," said Bruce Craven, vice president for electronic publishing at F.A. Davis. "A big part of the plus for us was POET's professional services and their willingness to look at the problem and try to apply their technology to it."

Craven also chose POET's Universal Object Server based on POET's ease of development and ability to integrate with other tools, its object-level granularity, the ability to have pointers from one database to another, its small footprint and price.

Few Tools for SGML

Convinced it would be adopted as a standard by the medical industry as well as book publishers, Craven based his company's publishing system around the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). SGML gives a publisher the flexibility to effectively deal with the structural aspects of a document without having to be concerned with specific output formats. But while a number of industries are adopting SGML for all their documents, F.A. Davis found there was a dearth of adequate tools for working with large numbers of SGML documents in a mission-critical environment, and decided to create their own.

Internet Delivery

According to Craven, one of the features that made POET's Universal Object Server very attractive is its ability to have pointers from one database to another. This enabled Craven to develop a system that stores each book as a separate database with cross references linking them, and avoid accumulating a single large database that could grow unwieldy and overtax hardware resources. It has other benefits, as well.

"These cross references will allow us to overcome one of the biggest problems of the Web, maintaining the hyperlinks, when we start our Web delivery," said Craven. "The POET database manages these hyperlinks automatically, and you can't break one without getting a warning."

Using POET's technology that converts SGML to other kinds of output, including HTML, F.A. Davis will be able to publish their materials on the Web without having to maintain separate sets of SGML and HTML files. The company will be able to convert their SGML documents on-the-fly, as Web pages are requested, and put them on the Web instantly. Craven will be looking at other POET Internet Developer Suite tools in the future when they begin integrating their publishing system with their business systems for commerce on the Web.

POET Benefits

Craven and his staff are using the POET Object Workbench for their database development work and are building other components of the system with C++ using Microsoft's Foundation Classes. POET's C++ tight binding makes it easy to integrate all the pieces of their system, including MFC and the freeware SGML parser they are using to help move their existing SGML documents, stored in a file-based system, into the repository. Craven also found POET excellent for doing their development work in their Windows NT environment.

POET's object-level granularity enables F.A. Davis authors, editors and reviewers to simultaneously check out different elements of a chapter they might be working on. What's more, because POET has such a small footprint, these elements could be worked on off-line using a portable computer while maintaining the full database functionality.

About F.A. Davis

The F.A. Davis Company, founded in 1879, is an independent publisher located in Philadelphia. The company publishes over 400 titles for the nursing, allied health, and medical fields in the educational and clinical markets. Its flagship publication, Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary now being released in its 18th edition is the most widely used medical dictionary by health sciences students and professionals.

As the opportunity to distribute information in media other than print has grown, Davis has shifted its focus beyond its traditional book publishing operations to all forms of media including CD-ROM, diskettes, hand held devices and the Internet. In order to facilitate the rich hypermedia relationships inherent in information distributed electronically, as well as enhance book editing and production, Davis has implemented the international standard SGML and the POET ODBMS manages its intellectual property.

About POET Software

POET Software Corporation provides developers a flexible ODBMS solution optimized for managing complexity in today's object-rich desktop, groupware and Internet/intranet environments. POET's product family is architected to integrate with leading development tools and languages, scales from desktop to enterprise server platforms, and supports major industry standards and operating systems. POET's award-winning technology is used by developers in leading companies in the U.S. and Europe. The company is based in San Mateo, Calif.

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