Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Macs in Content Management?

Author:David Detlefsen
Posted:2/23/1999; 5:11:13 PM
Topic:Macs in Content Management?
Msg #:3185 (In response to 3090)
Prev/Next:3184 / 3186

I thought I'd chime in about macs and content management.

First, first a bit of background. We are part of a group (about 50 people) that work at the interface between drug discovery and drug development at a major pharmaceutical company. The transition of work (candidate drugs) between these two areas is critical; information and time lost translates into delays in getting a new drug to market. In order to capture this data and make this transition easier, we began putting together a document that provides a snapshot of a new drug. Basically it’s a compilation of reports from key scientific areas that describe ‘what’s up’ with this compound. The reports are in MS word and the entire document ends up being about 40 to 80 pages assembled manually requiring about 2-3 days to complete. The document was then printed and sent out to the people who need the information…no updates. Bottom line is that using Frontier, we’ve been able automate the assembly of this document and have moved distribution and updating to the web.

The workflow is as follows: scientists write reports (MS word format using a boilerplate document) and deposit them on a server, data (text) is extracted from the reports using a VB script, the extracted data is written out an XML-like format, vacuumed into Frontier, rearranged to make the WebPages and indexed. The whole thing runs overnight (using the scheduler) and takes about 15 minutes to process 140 reports on a 9600 upgraded to a 300 MHz G3.

There is a parallel process where all the reports are written out as pdf files and these are assembled into a master document using applescript. We need this part since there are a lot of graphics that are included in the reports.

The system continues to evolve but it is clear that it has (is) had (having) a significant impact: critical information is always available, the document can be updated easily, the text of the reports is searchable and a lot of time is saved on the assembly. This system has sparked the interest of others in the company and looks like there are many potential applications of this type technology...who knows where it will end up.



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