XML and Cross-Media Content Management

by Mark Choate

The modern enterprise faces a complex publishing environment consisting of multiple sources of content, multiple content management systems, and publishing to multiple specifications and formats. These requirements combine to present considerable challenges to the successful development and deployment of an effective end-to-end, cross-media content management solution. PRISM (Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata), the publishing industry's standards-setting body, notes that "instead of content taking a one-way trip to the printed page it can now be sent in multiple directions at once -- not only to various consumer devices, but to other providers and aggregators as well, who will repackage, reposition, and repurpose it." (See http://prismstandard.org.)