Intelligent XML

IDOL Server enables organizations to truly realize the promise of XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language).

Autonomy has developed the only fully featured, commercially scalable infrastructure solution that is capable of working with native XML with an arbitrary structure automatically. This in turn allows organizations to eliminate the inefficiencies introduced by many of the manual issues associated with creating XML tags by understanding the content and purpose of either the tag itself, or related information, or both.

"E-businesses are bullish on XML enabling intimate understandings among interchange partners' commerce systems. At issue is the difficulties organizations are experiencing converting their information into XML-aware formats. Autonomy's XML automation addresses the major obstacle posed by today's requirement to manually prepare XML business documents." - Hadley Reynolds, Research Director, Delphi Group, Boston

Adding intelligence to XML

The use of XML is already widespread, but the deployment has significant limitations. Not only are tags often chosen manually - a costly process - but XML has no inbuilt understanding of concepts that are similar to one another. In XML, for example, the tag <aircraft> and the tag <plane> are wholly unrelated items. Typically, this presents considerable problems, because information from different sources that has been structured using different tagging schema cannot be reconciled, even when there are important conceptual similarities. This lack of conceptual understanding is a considerable handicap to the success of XML as the de facto standard for information exchange.

IDOL Server takes us forward, providing the critical layer of intelligence that understands the content and the purpose of the tagging and its related information. IDOL Server is a crucial component for any vendor who wants to make native XML an intelligent part of its core architecture.

Seamless XML interoperability

IDOL Server provides an infrastructure for complete automatic interoperability between applications using different XML tagging schemes, based on a conceptual understanding of XML documents, rather than on the tags themselves, and combines this with all other Autonomy functions.

Leveraging the maximum benefits from XML

This allows organizations to overcome problems that are typically associated with XML:

Removes the need for manually inserting XML tags Allows for interoperability between applications that use different XML tagging schemes Allows applications to use idea distancing (vital relationship between seemingly separately tagged subjects) to increase the value of the information provided to users Automates processes that were previously manual, therefore more successful and cost-effective in real-world environment Ability to index native XML directly into the engine Ability to obtain all output from the engine in XML format

IDOL Server addresses the issues of intelligently handling XML content in an automated manner. IDOL Server's ability to conceptually understand XML content enables it to automatically insert XML tags and links into documents, based on the concepts contained in the information. This eliminates all manual cost. Secondly, IDOL Server enables XML applications to understand conceptual information, independent of variations in tagging schemas or the variety of applications in use. This means, for example, that legacy data from disparate sources, tagged using different schemas, can be automatically reconciled and operated upon.

IDOL Server Integration

IDOL Server is made available both to end-users and to OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers). OEMs have the ability to embed intelligent XML functionality in their own products as part of IDOL Server, an architecture that enables multiple third party applications to automate the business operations on unstructured data.

IDOL Server is the next step to completely automating applications that handle structured, unstructured and semi-structured information. Autonomy's technology is easily integrated and enables customers to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by XML.

Key Benefits

Easier integration into Enterprise information systems, through the ability to support multiple simultaneous content sources, with information from each able to retain its inherent structure or be re-mapped to a normalized structure Facilitates multi-channel re-purposing of content from any source to any client Faster time to market for any OEM product based on IDOL Server due to rapid development times, flexibility of the Autonomy engine to handle whatever data structure is required, dynamically and automatically Ability to support all structured, semi-structured and unstructured requirements of the applications built on IDOL Server in a single, seamless consistent manner Ability to handle increasing demands for semi-structured data complexity and changing data structures, allowing legacy information to co-exist with improved data-schemas with no need to transition the data or for back-record conversion Ability to aggregate data from any enterprise source in any format and process and deliver the information in a unified XML format. This allows enterprise applications to handle the information itself rather than dealing with communications protocols, formats and sources

Autonomy and XML in Other Applications

A more subtle application of Autonomy and XML combined, lies in areas such as supply chain management where - building on the strengths of XML to accurately record precise product codes or catalog numbers - additional unstructured information may be required to relay qualitative or supplementary detail.

In such cases, in addition to the automated creation of the tag itself, Autonomy is able to analyze and process related peripheral information. For example, an aircraft manufacturer may have agreed the automation of a number of component deliveries that in practice, are influenced by additional pieces of information that relate to changes in manufacturing techniques, support issues or installation instructions. Normally, at this point the automation of supply chain management breaks down, as human beings manually have to process such information or worse, the information is discarded or fails to be recognized at all.

Similarly, the same issues can be seen to exist with commerce applications. XML may enable e-commerce vendors to tag products and the information associated with them (price, size, color and features) in a common way, making it easy for customers to comparison shop across the Web.

However, again the automated component of the model can be seen to break down with the example of a flowery summer dress which can also be classified as a floral print dress. Ultimately, while the human-readable XML tags provide a simple data format, it is the intelligent definition of these tags and common adherence to their usage that will determine their value. In order to really benefit from the use of XML it will be necessary to deal with the exception processing and the idea distancing issues, which are both vital to actually make that system work.

XML Limitations

XML is likely to feature prominently in the future development of all applications from on-line information sources to B2B transaction servers. However, like all tagging schemes it suffers from a number of limitations. Without Autonomy's IDOL Server solution there are significant barriers to ensuring that XML decreases the costs and increases the efficiency of managing information. Insufficient awareness of such barriers and lack of understanding of how to automate the otherwise burdensome administrative processes upon which XML depends, can lead to high labour costs and descriptive inconsistency.

Manual Processes The limitations of XML begin with the manual process employed to choose and apply the tags. One example of the effect of human behaviour and the inherent limitations of manually describing information - albeit from existing descriptions - is illustrated by the results of a US Department of Defense edict, mandating that internal users responsible for authoring documents also create an appropriate description of the document's content. At first glance, a seemingly sensible and pragmatic decision. However, after many months of activity, it was discovered that the vast majority of documents had been loosely described and tagged as 'general'. Whilst XML attempts to break away from such generalist terms, it remains dependant upon the same shortcomings of human behaviour that manifest themselves as 'inconsistency'. An individual's ability to describe information is dependant upon their personal experience, knowledge and opinions. Such 'intangibles' vary from person to person and are also dependent upon circumstance, dramatically reducing the effectiveness of the results. Further complications arise when subjects incorporate multiple themes. Should an article about "technology development in Russia within the context of changing foreign policy" be classified as (i) Russian technology (ii) Russian foreign policy, or (iii) Russian economics? The decision process is both complex and time consuming and introduces yet more inconsistency, particularly when the sheer number of options available to a user is considered. For example, over 800 tags for general newspaper subjects make the task of choosing a potentially basic subject description in a reasonable time-scale, an even more challenging process. The great paradox about XML is that the more tags you have defined, the more accurate and precise your application will be. However, the more tags you have means the more subjective choice