Quality Reports Automation with XML: Experiences in the aerospace industry
The application of DITA/XML goes beyond the generation of user guides and reference materials. These schemes offer a sound framework to publish and manage technical information generated during the software engineering process.
This presentation describes a case study where DITA has been used to generate XML-based software quality assurance reports. These reports need to combine textual content with data coming from different sources. In this scenario, XML is a suitable solution to automate data collection and manage their presentation in multiple output formats.
The proposed solution- based on XML/DITA – automates data collection (software metrics, problem reports, compliance with coding rules, etc.) and integration, the generation of textual documents in XML, and the publication in different formats (PDF, HTML, etc.).
Technical interfaces between the DITA XML editors and the tools providing source data have been defined.
The approach has been used with success in different projects for the aerospace industry for CNES (Centre national d’études spatiales) and ESA (European Space Agency).
What can attendees expect to learn?
Attendees will experience:
- Understanding of additional approaches to use DITA/XML
- Application of DITA/XML competences and skills in other document-centric activities and processes
- Integration of XML content editors with external tools for data collection and aggregation
- Practical case study on automated document generation with XML/DITA and XSLT
Meet the Presenter
Dr. Ricardo Eito-Brun is an associate professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, where he teaches different subjects related to digital publishing, knowledge organization and representation, classification, and information management. Ricardo holds a master degree in Informatis from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and in Documentation and Information Science from University of Granada (Spain) and a doctoral degree from University of Zaragoza (Spain) on the application of distributed collaboration environments and Semantic Web techniques for the description and classification of archival materials. His research interest is in information management practices, and he has been responsible for several large scale content management and web-based publishing projects for companies and public institutions in European countries. He is the author of five books on mark-up languages, XML and content management, and numerous articles and conference papers in the field of information management.