In my last post I spoke about how the transfer of structured data from the source system into the records management system works. Now that we have covered this step, lets look at some of the special features that you want to manage structured data as records.

Like any other record, you want to be able to preserve the authenticity, reliability, integrity and usability of the data.  The authenticity is maintained by the system storing an audit trail of the whole transfer process and any subsequent actions taken on the records. The reliability is based on the collaboration of application owners and records managers in the definition and classification of the structured records model, which means that the transferred data is based on a design by people who know all the facts about its source and usage. 

That leaves me to elaborate a bit more about the integrity and usability. 

The structured records get transferred into the records management environment as XML files.  Each transfer batch is a self contained group, consisting of a number of XML files that contain the data and a summary XML file that contains a detailed description of what the data files contain.  To be able to use the data and the summary file in future, each of them is described by a XML schema definition.   All of these files together form a single package and the records management rules are applied at the package level, meaning that the same security and retention rules apply to all files of a single transfer. The integrity of the individual files can be proved at any stage based on hash comparison technology between the summary and the data files.

Usability means that the structured data is not lost once it resides in the records management environment. Text indexing can be used to provide searching across the contents of the XML files to find batches that include data pertinent to a particular circumstance, e.g. all batches that contain customer number XYZ or order number 123.  This is the kind of full text searching that people use across all machine readable formats as part of early searches in the e-discovery or freedom of information processes. However, structured records should also be available to other methods of searching, e.g. for reporting engines. Having the data in XML format with a full schema description allows us to use our Record Query Server to create an ODBC data source pointing to the XML files, which can then be used by a whole variety of SQL query tools - this is a distinct advantage that you get from storing structured records as XML data, rather than as flat text file or PDF formatted report output.  If the original application still exists, and its algorithms are desirable in the analysis of the data, the records management system provides a re-load function to send the XML based data back to the original source database schema.

In all our design of HP TRIM functionality we pay attention to the characteristics of records as prescribed by ISO 15489: authenticity, reliability, integrity and usability, and as you can see,  structured records management is no exception.  By adhering to this principle we are able to create a truly unified records management environment, encompassing all formats of information, physical, electronic, unstructured and structured, meaning that you can apply a single set of consistent records management policies across all your enterprise content.