EDCMS: A content management system for engineering documents

Engineers often need to look for the right pieces of information by sifting through long engineering documents. It is a very tiring and time-consuming job. To address this issue, researchers are increasingly devoting their attention to new ways to help information users, including engineers, to access and retrieve document content. The research reported in this paper explores how to use the key technologies of document decomposition (study of document structure), document mark-up (with EXtensible Mark-up Language (XML), HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML), and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)), and a facetted classification mechanism. Document content extraction is implemented via computer programming (with Java). An Engineering Document Content Management System (EDCMS) developed in this research demonstrates that as information providers we can make document content in a more accessible manner for information users including engineers. The main features of the EDCMS system are 1) EDCMS is a system that enables users, especially engineers, to access and retrieve information at content rather than document level. In other words, it provides the right pieces of information that answer specific questions so that engineers don't need to waste time sifting through the whole document to obtain the required piece of information. 2) Users can use the EDCMS via both the data and metadata of a document to access engineering document content. 3) Users can use the EDCMS to access and retrieve content objects, i.e. text, images and graphics (including engineering drawings) via multiple views and at different granularities based on decomposition schemes. Experiments with the EDCMS have been conducted on semi-structured documents, a textbook of CADCAM, and a set of project posters in the Engineering Design domain. Experimental results show that the system provides information users with a powerful solution to access document content.