At the AIIM show at the Javits Center in NYC, I saw lots of software vendors with many offerings. Most of these vendors had the word “Enterprise” in the description of the software product. There were Enterprise Content Management solutions, Enterprise Search Solutions, and Enterprise Document Management Solutions. I guess “Enterprise” is a polite word for “Expensive”, or a more concise term for “Glommed together out of the three software companies that we bought last year”.

I saw a more modest, non-Enterprise offering that caught my eye, though.

The company is exegenix, and they capitalize on the current vogue for all things XML. Simply put, the product is a slick way to manage and automate the conversion of complex documents (usually PDFs) into an XML format.

Why, you ask, is this important? Or What, you ask is XML? XML is eXtended Markup Language, and it is to data what HTML is to documents. Namely, a structured but flexible way to capture content in a way that can then be acted on by other programs. Just as HTML and the Browser (which can read and display HTML) made it possible for anyone on the internet to read anyone else’s stuff, XML may make it possible for any program to read and understand any other program’s output. Many think the impact will be more profound than the HTML revolution.

So, why would my client, a medical publisher, be interested in a product that would help them convert their well formatted PDF articles into ugly XML “outlines” of content? The PDF version of the article is optimized for viewing by a person, the XML version is optimized for interpretation by another program, Why is that important?

Many of the components of our solution, particularly the categorization, search and retrieval components are programs that read through the content. If the content is organized, tagged, and structured, as it is in XML, the search routines can more accurately categorize it, and do a better job at delivering the right results to the User’s query.

So XML is Important for Content Management (you heard it here first, folks). And exegenix has a slick tool to make the conversion as easy as possible. The only thing easier is to not have to do the conversion at all. I’ll take that option up next time.