The plug-in offers a long-term data archival solution.
Acartus Inc., a developer of enterprise report management software, this
week announced the release of an XML-to-PDF plug-in for its ERM platform,
ApertureONE.
The utility introduces support for XSL-FO (extensible style language -
formatting objects) to expedite the high-volume migration of raw XML data to
PDF, according to the company.
Brant Henne, visual communications manager at Acartus, noted the
utility's space-saving capabilities. "We're not trying to replace XML in any
way; we're looking at it from reducing storage data overhead. XML is not
especially suited for long-term archiving because of the space demand, and
reducing the files to PDF saves considerable archival space. The capability to
reduce data storage long-term is becoming a necessary part of managing data
archival overall," Henne said.
The XML-to-PDF utility reduces file and storage costs by its ability to
batch multiple files into a single large object, and provides the option of
incremental backup, increased retrieval speed through random file access and a
storage format that meets the emerging ISO standard for digital archival
(PDF/A), company officials said.
"The need for high-volume XML to PDF transformation is a result of XML's
proliferation as an industry standard solution," Acartus CEO Brad Florin said in
a statement. "In the past several years, XML has emerged as the ideal format for
data exchange, even edging out EDI as the standard of choice for passing
information between networks and companies. Organizations are going so far as to
replace high-volume, print stream-based content formats with XML. While an
extremely effective tool for exchanging data, XML does not possess the necessary
attributes for volume-intensive archival. ApertureONE's XML to PDF utility
enables companies to continue leveraging XML as a data exchange format, while
introducing a scalable alternative for data with long-term archival
requirements."
As in previous releases, the XML-to-PDF conversion utility enables
ApertureONE to compress a series of XML input files to a single, large-volume
PDF file. The new release also fully supports XSL-FO, which provides formatting
tools for defining the appearance of a document.
The XSL-FO support
allows ApertureONE to create fully composed digital replicas of original
documents, company officials said. With the plug-in, companies can continue
using XML for data exchange while converting XML content to PDF for archival.
