July 2000 - The power of desktop publishing has now been fully built into a complete multi-user, database-centered information management system. That system can serve both print and web publishing. And the benefit is the most cost effective, profitable newspaper publishing system ever built.

There are lots of systems today that are "integrated" at the brochure level. What the marketing brochures usually mean is a collection of different programs that have interfaces between them. The databases in these systems are used to keep track of all the various files that are passed from user to user. From three to ten different programs with different user interfaces must be learned. Integration really just means file-passing and format translating interfaces between the disparate programs.

All of the various programs have different search engines, employ different file formats, and work differently. Newspaper MIS departments usually must have expertise in a wide variety of different file formats, servers, databases, and maintenance procedures. Trying to wring a cost justification out of such systems often ends up impacting the quality of content rather than the cost of operations. When publishing to the Internet is introduced, all of the costs are repeated over again with a separate and new collection of systems - often with a completely separate group of people and infrastructure. It takes a real marketing spin to call such collections of programs, interfaced together into a file-passing workflow, an "integrated" system.

In contrast, consider what the new DTI system means to the cost of operations. All of a newspaper's publishable information is in a unified SQL database system. There is one kind of database to learn, with a common search engine, and a common user operation for stories, photos and graphics, page planning, pagination, advertising, and archives. Pagination is simplified to a multi-user view into the unified database, where everything that should appear on a page is stored. Computer automated pagination is made possible by this unified database architecture. This automation is a main factor contributing to bottom-line production savings. In the DTI system, both print and web publishing are served from the same database foundation. Content is managed using standard formats; XML for text, JPEG for images, PDF for ads and pages, and multimedia such as Quicktime, Flash, or animated GIF. More importantly, all of these are kept in the relational database with relational links between stories and photos, ads and graphics, and between pages and stories and ads. Publishable information is at the user's fingertips, not scattered around a system in individual files.

All of the software tools in DTI's system, from the text editor, SpeedWriter, to the page planning tool, PlanSpeed, to the Pagination tool PageSpeed, to the advertising tools ClassSpeed and AdSpeed, share the same user interfaces. This also is the case with WireSpeed and PhotoWireSpeed, the wire service content reception and routing tools. All of these programs talk to the same unified Sybase SQL database. The directory, routing, searching and messaging tools, called the Data Center, the Info Center, the Search Center and the Message Center are common to every single program, giving every user standardized tools to look into the databases (active and archive) to plan and manage the publishable information.

When it comes to publishing to the Web, the same Data Center and Info Center are Internet ready and can publish dynamically and directly to the Internet without any re-purposing costs whatsoever. The only thing that changes is the web page design tool - in this case Adobe GoLive. Think of the cost savings inherent in learning, operating, managing and maintaining one system instead of eight or ten. That's what DTI's new system makes possible.

How can such a system be so completely integrated without being closed, proprietary, and unable to keep up with "best of breed" innovations? That has always been the question for which there were only trade-offs in the past.

The answer today lies in the total integration of Adobe InDesign with DTI's SQL database foundation and Java-based data management tools. Adobe has set industry standards with Postscript and Photoshop. SQL is the only database standard. Because of the open, object-based architecture of InDesign and InCopy, Adobe technology can now be delivered as a unified, purpose-built system, instead of as a collection of programs. DTI is the first to deliver this possibility.

It remains true that some are simply using InDesign as they use Quark, in a file-passing environment. InDesign can function as a single-user program. While doing that is simpler for a vendor or a newspaper "self-integrator," it completely misses the most powerful aspect of InDesign which is the new object architecture that it has pioneered in the development of desktop publishing software. The file-passing approach also misses the cost savings that a totally unified system can offer.

DTI can provide a fully unified newspaper system, but keep it current with the latest advances from Adobe because the object architecture allows objects from Adobe and other vendors to be written into the full environment. There are none of the limitations that attend typical extensions to a single user program such as Quark.

The bottom line is that newspapers can now choose the most profitable print and web publishing system ever created.

A unified, relational database system built around industry standards manages all publishable information and empowers people to do more with it, do it faster, better, more easily, and as a result, more cost effectively.