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Yasser alSafadi, Mehran Moshfeghi, Ray Krasinski : Philips Research, Juggy Jagannathan, Careflow|Net
Yasser alSafadi Senior Member Research Staff Philips Research Briarcliff Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510, USA Phone (914) 945-6294 Fax (914) 945-6141 yha@philabs.research.philips.com
Yasser alSafadi, Ph.D, received his degree from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Arizona. Currently, he is a Senior Member of the Research Staff at Philips Research. He is leading the project on Healthcare Interoperability, which builds testbeds for experimenting with OMG's CORBA, Microsoft's DCOM object brokering technologies, and eXtensible Markup Language (XML). His research interests are in: Distributed component architectures for interoperable systems, Multimedia servers and service delivery. He co-chairs the Special Interest Groups: Health Level 7 Image Management, Andover Working Group (AWG) for Open Healthcare, Interoperability - DICOM, CORBAmed BioMedical Imaging Working Group.
This paper illustrates the use of XML in a CORBA/Java/Web-based Electronic Medical Record (EMR). The overall architecture is a three-tier system. The first tier is made up of thin clients with Java-enabled Web-browsers. The second is comprised of servers that service both HTTP and CORBA clients. The third tier includes various clinical information systems such as hospital information systems. HTTP is the communication mechanism for downloading Web pages, applets and images, while CORBA is used for Java client-server communication. Our EMR Java applet includes IDL-generated client stubs. These stubs allow the applet to invoke objects on the ORB server. We can also run the system as an application in a platform independent manner since it is 100% Java.
We are exploring the use of XML because the EMR is document-centric. In our initial implementation, when a client requests demographics or Laboratory information from the server the server returns a Java object. The attributes of the object are then used to display the appropriate information in a Java GUI. We are now using a utility from Careflow|Net's XML|IT package which allows the client automatically converts Java structures to XML-tagged documents. The resulting XML documents are then sent together with style sheets to a separate Netscape window for display. The style sheets are created with SoftQuad's Panorama Publisher 2.0. The display is also achieved with the Panorama plug-in for Netscape. We have used different style sheets to illustrate the separation of content from presentation. Client-side processing of Java object to XML takes load off the server. We also have the option to send an XML document to the client directly. Another area were XML is used is in the help menu. We are using Sun's JavaHelp APIs and the table of content of the helpset file is an XML document.
Nathan Birtle
Nathan Birtle European Marketing Director ArborText UK Ltd nbirtle@arbortext.com Phone: +44 171 207 6875 Fax: +44 171 640 0071
XSL, the Extensible Style Language, is the language in which you can specify a style sheet for use with XML. A proposal for the XSL specification was submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) by ArborText, Inso and Microsoft last September. The official XSL work being done under the auspices of the W3C is under way. This presentation reviews the latest status of the XSL specification, illustrates examples of XSL in action, and demonstrates some tools that work with XSL.
Albert Bruffaerts
A. Bruffaerts Principal Software Engineer Sema Group Belgium Address: rue de Stalle 96, B-1180 Brussels, Belgium Email: albert.bruffaerts@sema.be Fax: +32 2 333 55 22 Tel: +32 2 333 52 42
Degree of "Ingénieur Civil en Mathématiques Appliquées", obtained from the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) at Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Prize IBM Belgium of Informatics 1981 for his Engineer thesis. Former research assistant at UCL, funded by a scholarship of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research. Former senior member of the scientific staff at the Philips Research Laboratory Belgium; from 1990 to 1992, responsible for the development of interactive sequence editors and generators for the CD-I multimedia technology. Since 1992, software consultant, senior software engineer, and currently, principal software engineer at Sema Group Belgium; former technical manager of the ESPRIT III project MIPS in which he lead the implementation of an SGML Engine and the kernel of a HyTime Engine; usually involved in projects with complex information modeling or object-oriented software development using XML, HTML, SGML, RTF, etc. Speaker at SGML Europe 94, 95 and 96. Architect and lead developer of the SGML Application Framework used in the converters rtf2htm and xtr2any downloadable from www.sema.be.
In the general context of the renewal of its computer system, the Belgian Football Union (URBSFA-KBVB) was forced to replace the old production system for its weekly monitor "La Vie Sportive / Sportleven" (VSSL). The contents of VSSL is a mix of texts, written with a commercial wordprocessor, and data, extracted from databases. There are 13 coordinated sources, distributed on 9 different geographical sites around Belgium. The main problem to solve was to prepare the texts and the extracted data in order to reduce, at the maximum, the manual intervention of the prepress department of the printer, while giving the source coordinators a user-friendly way to define the contents of their contribution to VSSL. The new system, currently producing the VSSL every week since 6 July 1998, is heavily based on the use of future-proof portable technology, as XML-based formats, the C++ SGML Application Framework and Java. XML-based formats are used for nearly all external data representations, be it configuration files or database extractions, the definition of the content structure of the newsmagazine or the definition of the numerous required conversions to XPress Tags. We propose to describe in some details how XML was actually put to work and the resulting advantages.
Jean-Charles d'Harcourt
Jean-Charles d'Harcourt Xyvision France 69, rue d'Aguesseau F92100 Boulogne Tel.: 331 46105040 Fax.:331 46105054 Mobile: 336 11 36 87 86 Email: harcourt@xyvision.com http://www.xyvision.com
Jean-Charles d'Harcourt is the European Sales and Marketing Director at Xyvision. Prior to joining Xyvision, Jean-Charles was co-founder and VP Marketing and Sales at Grif S.A. the former European leading company in SGML and HTML publishing tools. Jean-Charles has more than 8 years experience in the document management business and has been a speaker in a number of international conferences including recently SGML/XML Europe'98 and SGML / XML Belux conference'97 and was graduated in 1983 from the European Business School.
Laurent Sabarthez
Laurent Sabarthez BaBeL Consulting Laurent.Sabarthez@mipnet.fr
After graduating in Literature, L. Sabarthez has been a software developer since nearly thirty years. Involved in software internationalization since 1993 with major companies in the field, he develops specialized software tools built around SGML solutions, and manages large software development and organizational projects in multilingual document engineering. His current area of research is about data description languages.
Worldwide markets have opened huge opportunities to the linguistic engineering industry. Unfortunately, most actors in this field still rely on generic desktop publishing tools, which proved poorly suited to heterogenous multi-lingual document processing. This situation has heavy and negative consequences on costs, quality, and delays.
This paper presents a review of the specialized needs in multi-lingual document processing for the linguistic engineering community, focusing on heterogenous document formats, structure and layout preservation, character sets issues, terminology management, specialized editing tools for translators and copy-editors, and interfaces with translation memories and machine translation tools.
A generic SGML application is then sketched out, based on a single, unified document format to be used throughout every step of the linguistic engineering process. The general structure of hub documents is presented, and two kinds of hub markup are emphasized, depending on wether they correspond to "fixed" or "floating" elements. Two different approaches to text extraction and markup insulation are discussed, both based on the SGML entity mechanism. Rationales are given for the design of DTDs complying with the above-mentioned requirements, and XML implementations are considered too.
Implementation issues are discussed in depth, including conversion problems from/to the common hub format, interfaces with desktop publishing tools, terminology databases, translation memories and machine translation tools, version control systems, and integration with project management tools and methods.
A temptative evaluation of the proposed solution in terms of economic impact is given as conclusive material.
Horst Silberhorn
Horst Silberhorn FORWISS - Bayerisches Forschungszentrum für Wissensbasierte Systeme Am Weichselgarten 7 91058 Erlangen-Tennenlohe Email: silberh@forwiss.de
1968 born in Nuernberg, Germany
1995 Diplom degree in Mathematics (Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuernberg)
since 1996: member of the research staff at the Bavarian Research Centre for Knowledge-Based Systems (FORWISS).
The availability of multilingual documents and the translation of technical documents into various languages has become increasingly important within the past few years. The reasons are obvious: documents have to be available in various languages due to globalisation and new markets. Since products are sold around the globe, the respective documentation has to be made available in different languages.
Nowadays electronic systems are more and more used for the translation of documents in order to facilitate this process. Existing systems deal with unstructured documents satisfactorily, but many possibilities offered by structured documents remain unused, e.g. structure-oriented methods to guarantee of quality and consistency of highly complex documents.
In the research project ForeignSGML we have examined these possibilities and have developed an approach to use logically structured representations (e.g. SGML or XML documents) to support the translation process. Based on the logical representation of structurally marked-up documents, we propose concepts and methods to access,correlate, manage, match and represent multilingual versions of documents. Thus, sophisticated validation of structures is enabled and it becomes possible to compare and align the structures of different document variants and language versions. By this means, document entities, which are inconsistent in structure, content or terminology can be detected automatically. These structural differences, caused by errors and peculiarities of the translators are categorized and outlined to help the translators in reviewing and re-editing the translations.
This new approach of ForeignSGML for the management of SGML/XML documents makes it easier to translate documents and to keep them up to date. Additionally, new possibilities arise to control consistency and quality and to navigate between various language versions.
Philippe Vijghen
Philippe Vijghen Project Manager SGML Technologies Group ACSE sa/nv 29 Boulevard General Wahis B-1030 Brussels Belgium phone: +32 2 705 70 21 fax: +32 2 705 81 01 email: phv@sgmltech.com WWW URL: http://www.sgmltech.com
Philippe Vijghen is a project manager at ACSE sa/nv, Brussels, a Member of the SGML Technologies Group. He is a software engineer and systems architect specializing in object-oriented distributed applications and complex document-oriented Electronic Data Interchange systems; in addition to structuring documents, these systems make use of SGML at other levels, such as for external application programming interfaces. He obtained a degree, specializing in electromechanical engineering, at the Free University of Brussels (ULB). He may be contacted at phv@sgmltech.com.
This paper proposes the use of a pivot format when developing EDI applications, based on the experience of three operational projects. The role of SGML/XML, as pivot, is presented in a broader context, with regard to other relevant candidates for structuring data.
Andreas Weller
Andreas Weller Head of the informatic section euroscript S à r l 55, rue de Luxembourg L-8077 Bertrange Luxembourg E-mail: weller@euroscript.lu Web site: www.euroscript.lu
Andreas Weller --- Andreas is the head of the informatic section by euroscript Sàrl in Luxembourg. He is responsible for all SGML application, specialized in SGML systems, terminologies and databases in a multilingual environment. He is the originator of a new SGML publishing system for the supplement of the official journal of the European community and a lot of related projects. Prior joining euroscript, Andreas worked for OFFIS sabl as consultation for electronical documentation in SGML projects for the telecommunication sector. His SGML career begins as responsible for SGML in the project of the secondary law in Swedish and Finnish for the Office of Publication of the European community.
Many peoples focused on a technical approach if they speak over SGML or XML. They based the use of SGML only on a formal description of the documents. The reuse of documents is based on the granularity and the semantic approach of the DTD.
In a case study over the creation of the vocabulary CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary) in 11 languages, it should be shown that only a semantic approach in SGML can solved the related problems. In Star Track "The next generation" Scotty coming back to 1994 and speak with one computer, but he doesn't understand him. I will present you some tools that speak SGML with you. Is this what we can call SGML-"The next generation" or show this only that with SGML you can do a lot of funny things and we are at the beginning. To build a multilingual terminology you need more as to speak with your computer. You need structured documents so that you can re-engineer certain elements.You need synoptic documents with the same structure in all languages and you need an environment to do the work. Language is invariant, and structure is invariant between the languages. Relational Databases are fixed on the Relationship Model. Object- orientated Databases are brand new on the market and tools to handle are not proved as well. The solution is native SGML that reflects all your needs to build the terminology in a semantic and synoptic way.
The project to re-engineering the CPV, was done by automatic engineering over structured document collections from 10 years (10 Million tenders of the European commission). After a first automatic version was created, it is going to the linguistic service and then to the translation-teams. With this approach, we have found in a short time period a good synoptic vocabulary.
"The next generation" will perhaps be language independent and based on an automatic translation, that the world is coming together. What we can do now is to structure our documents in a semantic, synoptic way that it can be reuse for the next evolution.
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