Technical documentation is used in many areas of the everyday life. Nearly everything has to be provided with at minimum a drawing including a few locators. The product liability and many other issues regarding consumer protection have to be covered inside technical documentation. A special form of technical documentation is electronic technical documentation, a further subform is interactive electronic technical documentation (IETD). The complexity of IETD especially regarding the huge mass of data elements, their linkage and the version management issuing and release process must be controlled via a special document management system.
To handle these complex structures of ASD S1000D IETDs, the Common Source Data Base is necessary.

The aim of a CSDB (Common Source Data Base, in accordance with specification S1000D

S1000D

S1000D is an international specification for the procurement and production of technical publications. It is an XML specification for preparing, managing, and using equipment maintenance and operations information. It was initially developed by the for use with military aircraft...

) is to provide the user (mainly technical authors, illustrators and publication managers) with automated processes to handle the complete palette of CSDB objects.

Starting with the smallest addressable unit, the DataModules under the use of different Document Type Definitions (DTD's) or schemas has to be supported. Furthermore the publications, in process review forms (IPRF's) in later S1000D versions known as comments, for authoring reasons must be provided. Last but not least the illustrations and all kinds of hotspot declaration files have to be assisted.

Processes to perform the S1000D file based exchange between customer and/or industry, to generate complete IETDs and to verify all these processes, the CSDB must ensure data integrity

Data integrity

Data Integrity in its broadest meaning refers to the trustworthiness of system resources over their entire life cycle. In more analytic terms, it is "the representational faithfulness of information to the true state of the object that the information represents, where representational faithfulness...

 and security during all actions listed above.

Support the handling of technical publication

These technical publications consist of DataModules (DMs), Illustrations (ICNs), partly hotspot-declarations and its Info Object instance (IO) or the Publication Module (PM) in later Versions of S1000D.
The Info Object instance (XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 file, using a special Document Type Definition

Document Type Definition

Document Type Definition is a set of markup declarations that define a document type for SGML-family markup languages...

) consists of DM- and ICN-references to guide the loading process into a retrieval system and to build the table of content, partly the list of applicable publications LOAP.

Connection between exchanging, authoring/illustrating environment and data vault

The basic mechanism is to copy S1000D objects like DMs, IPRF's or Illustrations out of the secured vault of a CSDB into a working area, to avoid that more than one user is able to change the object.
After the changes have been performed, the object will be copied back to the CSDB vault and its issue increased.

Furthermore the CSDB is able to support technical authors or operators with a checking environment.
The checks result in standardized files like CSV

CSV

CSV may refer to:* Clerics of Saint Viator* Common Stored Value Ticket* Confederación Sudamericana de Voleibol* Character Strengths and Virtues* Christian Social People's Party* Community Service Volunteers...

 or plain text

Plain text

In computing, plain text is the contents of an ordinary sequential file readable as textual material without much processing, usually opposed to formatted text....

, to ensure an easy transfer to the originator of the checked data. The originator may be the technical author during the authoring process or in case of international data exchange in accordance with ASD/AIA S1000D, an industrial partner respective a sub-contractor who delivers documentation.

The checks enclose tests against official documents like:

– business rules of the programme

– guidance documents

– style guide documents

– ASD/AIA S1000D and its versions

– or starting at the version 2.3 of S1000D, against the business rule exchange datamodule (BREX DM).

Nationalisation

If the customer is interested in national/translated and customized documentation out of the common documentation, a nationalization process must be supported of the CSDB.

ASD/AIA S1000D file-based data exchange

Data exchange

Data exchange

Data exchange is the process of taking data structured under a source schema and actually transforming it into data structured under a target schema, so that the target data is an accurate representation of the source data. Data exchange is similar to the related concept of data integration except...

 routines and automatisms are the most important reason to develop a CSDB, to ensure a process reliability.
The import and export routines can be fully automated or be performed via CSDB operator.

The components of a Data exchange package are for example:

– one data dispatch note (DDN)

– a certain amount of datamodules (DMs) and

– all illustrations, referenced by the DMs above.

The identifier of a DDN is the (DDN-Id) found within the sgml/xml file and expressed in the filename plus related extension.

The identifier of the DM is the data module code (DMC) found within the sgml/xml file and expressed in the filename plus related extension.

The identifier of the Illustration is the illustration control number (ICN) found within the cgm/tif/mil/cg4/etc. file and expressed in the filename plus related extension.

These packages contain all necessary information to provide the receiver with the necessary information.

Query and search

The CSDB must provide or support the complete Integrated Logistics Support

Integrated Logistics Support

Integrated logistics support is an integrated approach to the management of logistic disciplines in the military, similar to commercial product support or customer service organisations...

 (ILS) process with its information.
Thus detailed query and search masks have to be delivered.

A good solution may be to use commercial off-the-shelf

Commercial off-the-shelf

In the United States, Commercially available Off-The-Shelf is a Federal Acquisition Regulation term defining a nondevelopmental item of supply that is both commercial and sold in substantial quantities in the commercial marketplace, and that can be procured or utilized under government contract...

 database products to implement business logic

Business logic

Business logic, or domain logic, is a non-technical term generally used to describe the functional algorithms that handle information exchange between a database and a user interface.- Scope of business logic :Business logic:...

.
The CSDB must be able to handle all file format

File format

A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...

s supported via the actual version of S1000D.