Seybold 2001 Mark Stephens
(Managing Director)
www.idrsolutions.com
Who are IDRSolutions?
Based in United Kingdom.Customers mainly large corporations.Focuses on connecting systems together/reusing data.Produces a very flexible ‘glue component’ – StoryPad.
www.idrsolutions.com
What is StoryPad?
Tool for textual restructuring and utilising data as efficiently as possible.Focus on logic/structure of the data.Explicit (location/style).Implicit (content itself).Program has ‘intelligence’Turn data into its own scripting language.
www.idrsolutions.com
StoryPad and pdf
This functionality extends to data from pdf files.
www.idrsolutions.com
Some Key features.
Java program – multi-platform and extendible.Automated process or GUI client.Takes data from, any textual file format, pdf (without Acrobat) or legacy systems.Turns the data into its own description language.Algorithms for intelligently merging story components together.Inputs and outputs to flat files, into any database or to the web.Enterprise features (include Email reporting, support for parallel database architecture, incremental feeds, user tracking).In live use.
Extremely configurable.
www.idrsolutions.com
Key Benefits
Usability - low level of ‘technical expertise’ needed.Reliability.Open standards.Fits into existing situations/architecture.
www.idrsolutions.com
Some Uses (so far) include
Intelligently feed data into a database.Validate XML news feeds from PA, Reuters.Create an incremental data stream.Extract content from HTML pages.Data mining.Handle syndication data.And extract content from pdf… (anything which can print)
www.idrsolutions.com
Works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
So does our product.
News InternationalPart of -
Our biggest client (so far)
High profile Publisher The Sun 3,572,506 copies dailyThe Times 723,602 copies dailySunday Times 1,398,019 copies
weekly
www.idrsolutions.com
Business requirement
Need to move data from a freeform ‘page’ structure to a story structure as automatically and as efficiently as possible.
Two key systemsLegacy publishing system from Unisys (Hermes).Web publishing system from Vignette.Must work together with minimum alterations.
www.idrsolutions.com
Chosen solution
StoryPad
Options open for the future (standardise on XML/pdf).Software can be easily reconfigured.Software has numerous other uses.Software supported and developed.No need to change (break) current systems/workflow.
www.idrsolutions.com
Client GUI allows for mistakes to be corrected, reconfiguration as house styles change, and deal with unexpected circumstances.
Implementation
As a server process, StoryPad takes pages, uses user-defined rules to intelligently extract stories and places into database.
Publishing system
database
To document management
system
Unix server running Storypad as background
task.
pdf odbc
www.idrsolutions.com
A happy customer…
Existing investment preserved.New systems not tied to legacy systems.Allows use of open file formats.Software continues to be developed.Ability to handle any unexpected events.
www.idrsolutions.com
Interested??
Visit our website at
www.idrsolutions.comOr come and see us…