Publishing Document Builder architecture

The IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Publishing Publishing Document Builder provides a web interface for building reports from templates, generating and viewing documents. It contains a document generation service.

Two roles are usually involved in creating a document: the report designer and the everyday user.

  • Report designers can upload templates that they created in Document Studio along with stylesheets into Publishing Document Builder. They can assemble the templates into reports and create data source connections.
  • Everyday users can then generate documents from the reports with no template coding knowledge or configuration required.

Architecture

The following diagram shows the architecture of Publishing Document Builder.

Publishing Document Builder web architecture diagram showing PUB, the boundary, data access, and output formats
Image key:
  • DOORS = IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS®
  • DOORS Next = IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next
  • DWA = IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS - Web Access
  • ETM = IBM Engineering Test Management
  • EWM = IBM Engineering Workflow Management
  • JRS = Jazz® Reporting Service
  • PUB = IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Publishing
  • Rhapsody = IBM Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody®
  • RMM = IBM Rhapsody Model Manager

Publishing Document Builder capabilities

Publishing Document Builder provides the following capabilities:

  • Everyday users do not need to install the Engineering Publishing desktop application to generate documents.
  • Alerts notify you when document generation is completed, with links to the documents.
  • Download all document generation results or individual file types.
  • Share documents through unique URLs.
  • Schedule document generation jobs to run at a specific time or interval.
  • Report on projects that are enabled for configuration management.
  • Report designers can hide complexity from document generators.
  • Report designers can combine one or more templates to create reports.
  • Report designers can create draft reports.
  • Report administrators can monitor running document generation jobs.

What's the difference between templates, reports, and documents?

A template is a resource that a report designer creates in IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Publishing(PUB) Document Studio using data source schemas, variables, and styles. Templates have the file extension .dta.

A report is assembled from one or more templates and stylesheets. Templates correspond to sections of a report. For example, you might have different templates for table of contents, front cover, body, index, and back cover. These templates can be reused in different reports.

A document is generated from a report. Users can find reports that the report designer created and then generate documents with a single click. Documents can be in Microsoft Word, Excel, HTML, PDF, or XSL-FO formats.