Atlas of S1000D Issues 4.1, 4.2, and 5.0

Atlas

of S1000D Issues

4.1, 4.2, and 5.0

Business Rules Decision Points Arranged into a Linear Topic Map

Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

Atlas of S1000D Issues 4.1, 4.2, and 5.0

Business Rules Decision Points Arranged into a Linear Topic Map

1st Edition

Copyright © 2022 Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

Contains some information from S1000D Issue 4.1 Untangled and S1000D® Issue 4.1 and Issue 4.2 Navigation Map published by the author in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

The author is not a lawyer. This book and the content provided herein are simply for guidance and educational purposes and do not take the place of legal advice from your attorney. Every effort has been made to ensure that the content provided in this book is accurate and helpful. However, this is not an exhaustive resource on the subjects covered in this book. No liability is assumed for losses or damages due to the information provided. You are responsible for your own choices, actions, and results. You should consult your attorney for your specific project questions and needs.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the author. The exceptions (if any) are explicitly outlined in the text of this book.

Cover design by Alice Jago

The Geography icon used on the cover is by Eucalyp, via the Noun Project.

The S1000D™ and S1000D® are registered trademarks owned by ASD (AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe). They are mentioned in this book only for clarification and reference purposes. They are proprietary to ASD and are not affiliated with this document in any way.

The author has joined the Medium Partner Program and gets paid for her writing there. Some of the material in this book has appeared in the publication S1000D Implementation Map on Medium. Any other trademarks and brands mentioned in this book are proprietary to their owners and not affiliated with this document in any way.

Based on S1000D® Copyright (S1000D® Issue 4.1, Issue 4.2, and Issue 5.0) and Fair Use Doctrine (The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition (4.77-4.87)) this book does not reproduce any part of the S1000D Issue 4.1, Issue 4.2, and Issue 5.0 except quoting BRDP (Business Rules Decision Points) numbers, titles, and definitions (which are emphasized in italic to make the quoting recognizable), and several explicitly quoted and referenced paragraphs from the specification (S1000D Issues 4.1, 4.2 or 5.0) text. Chapter (Chap) and Paragraph (Para) numbers where the BRDP are defined or where the related information can be found in the specification text are quoted as well. Quotes of flowing text — both from S1000D and other sources — are clearly identified and either given in quotation marks, in italic, or both.

For simplicity’s sake, only the S1000D abbreviation without the trademark or registered trademark symbols is used further on in this book. The same applies to any other trademark or registered trademark named in this book.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate website addresses and other information at the time of publication, she does not assume any responsibility for errors or changes after publication. Further, the author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites and their content.

The author reserves the right to make any changes she deems necessary to future versions of the publication to ensure its accuracy.

optimistwriter.com

In memory of Ingo Schütze

December 21, 1965 – November 18, 2021

A dear friend and one of the best leaders I had the pleasure and honor to know and work with.

Preface

I love the S1000D and its community! 

For those who don’t yet know what S1000D¹ is, here is a definition from the website of those who developed and maintain it:

S1000D, International specification for technical publications using a common source database, is an international specification for the production of technical publications. Since its inception over 30 years ago, S1000D has grown to where it is now used widely around the world. Currently, its uses include:

- Defense systems — including land, sea, and air products

- Civil aviation products

- Construction industry products

- Ship industry products

The specification is publicly available and is free to download from this web site. Downloads include the specification, schemas, sample files, and much more.

I’m honored to have contributed to S1000D development between 2004, when I first dipped my toes into it, and 2017, when I finally stepped down as Chair of the Business Rules Working Group (BRWG) after almost twelve years. I had enormous fun doing so, and I am glad to continue being a BRWG member and contributing to its work.

Since 2016, I have dived into a new area, bringing self-help and gamification together. I chose to call it self-gamification, and I enjoy exploring and developing it immensely.

But who said I couldn’t continue to enjoy my passion for S1000D, and the quirky possibility of being creative regarding standards, regulations, markup languages, product structures, business processes, and decision making? This wild mixture of things to consider to produce and maintain a complex conglomeration of data and processes can be as exciting and entertaining as the most engaging video games.

Add great people to the mix, and you have the adventure of a lifetime.

I once read of similar feelings being expressed by a member of another technical community. I wouldn’t have believed how fun working on developing a technical standard could be, had I not experienced it for myself.

I guess it has something to do with the common will to make various and maybe even conflicting requirements work together, so that all partners implementing the standard could both satisfy their and their customer requirements and make sure that all involved could operate successfully together as well as profit together from the joint effort.

Although I haven’t worked on developing the new Issues of the S1000D since stepping down in 2017 as Chair of the BRWG, I didn’t desert the field altogether.

I moved my focus to the Issues (= versions), which are already in use. An interesting thing about S1000D, and other technical specifications and standards, is that not only the latest Issues are in use, but earlier ones too. It has to do with the considerable investments involved in implementing such a significant number of rules and regulations. 

In the past few years, I have created several resources for the S1000D community, to help S1000D users find their way through the many decision points while implementing it. 

These are three books:

S1000D Issue 4.1 Untangled, which was later replaced by

S1000D® Issue 4.1 and Issue 4.2 Navigation Map, and

brDoc, BREX, and Co.: S1000D Business Rules Made Easier, which is a short complimentary resource explaining various concepts and constructs of S1000D business rules

I have also provided further resources such as Microsoft Excel files presenting the S1000D Navigation Map — as I named it — in tabular form, which S1000D users can use to fill in with their decisions while implementing the specification for their projects’ organizations.

Here are the reasons for creating these resources:

During my almost twelve-year chairmanship (and co-chairmanship) of the S1000D Implementation Guide and Business Rules Task Teams, which later became the aforementioned Business Rules Working Group, I was asked many times when I would write an S1000D for Dummies book.

I was intrigued by this idea, so I scrutinized some classic and new For Dummies books and bought various books on XML and SGML (one of which even had Implementation Guide in its title), but still, I could not find a way to approach this challenge.

Then I forgot all about the book for dummies, remembering it from time to time and then forgetting again.

Fast forward to December 1, 2015, when I started an online resource on my website to determine the most appropriate sequence of steps when implementing S1000D, and Issue 4.1 in particular. In other words, I tried to arrange the Business Rules Decision Points (BRDP) defined in S1000D Issue 4.1 into a sequential order of decision-making.

In the end it wasn’t a book for dummies. It was neither an index nor an introductory course guide to S1000D. And it was not a classic topic map² (see more on this in the section Why Is This a Topic Map? in the Introduction). Instead, it was a linear thread of decision points that must be addressed when implementing this technical specification.

At some stage in the work on this chain of Business Rules Decision Points, topics started evolving independently and taking shape. And only when those topics emerged, did I understand what it was — a linear topic map with concrete associations and visible, logical occurrences. 

Since the release of the first book in 2016 and the release of the S1000D® Issue 4.1 and Issue 4.2 Navigation Map about a year later, those who purchased one or both of these books found them to be a great learning resource, using them as a map for figuring out which topics they needed to concentrate on and which they could ignore while implementing S1000D.

This resource became a versatile and powerful tool, probably because it neither reinvented nor interpreted what was available on S1000D. It complemented the available chapter structure offered by S1000D and, together with it, provided an excellent navigation portfolio for successful and much faster implementation of this multidimensional and global technical standard.

I also witnessed this resource being used as a workbook, especially the paperback version, where the users (I call those who purchase my books on S1000D users rather than readers) made notes related to their project or organization.

I was thrilled to find out that this linear map I came up with was valuable and helpful, also because I found it helpful in my understanding of S1000D, too, while developing it. 

After publishing the second book in 2017 and covering two of the multiple Issues of S1000D available and used to the present date, I started getting requests for such a map for earlier Issues of S1000D, especially Issue 2.3, which is still widely used. 

In June 2019, another S1000D Issue, Issue 5.0, was released, and I realized that it would make sense to bring parallels to all major Issues S1000D and their implementation. And more specifically, S1000D Issue 1.9 (officially called Initial Issue Change 9), Issue 2.0, Issue 2.1, Issue 2.2, Issue 2.3, Issue 3.0, Issue 4.0.1, Issue 4.1, Issue 4.2, and Issue 5.0 — ten Issues of S1000D in total. Such a resource mapping the parallels in decision making of implementing these ten Issues of S1000D will help convert and transfer the S1000D conforming and compliant data and processes from lower to higher Issues more quickly and efficiently.

Plus, discussing the intricacies of implementing a technical standard, from the perspective of both technical and business processes, is worth bringing up and sustaining.

That is why I created the new blog/publication on Medium called S1000D Implementation Map³. I am excited to research and explore the implementation of this versatile specification on its pages.

The creation of such a tremendous resource takes considerable time. However, the implementers of some of the S1000D Issues might not have time to wait for it to be ready. Because of that and due to a direct request to create such a resource for Issue 5.0, I decided to release a book with the BRDP linear topic map for S1000D Issues 4.1, 4.2, and 5.0.

This book, Atlas of S1000D Issues 4.1, 4.2, and 5.0, is the result.

It differs in format from the previous books I created for Issues 4.1 and 4.2 because it does not present the BRDP chain separately for each S1000D Issue, but maps each decision point for S1000D Issues 4.1, 4.2, and 5.0. In such a way, you will be able to compare the location of the BRDP in different Issues and understand more clearly what happened to each Business Rules Decision Point ever since the BRDP got their unique identification numbering and nomenclature in S1000D Issue 4.1.

I hope that, as with the other ones, this resource will support those implementing S1000D in their work, as well as S1000D working groups in further developing the specification. As an integral member, I will continue to contribute the knowledge I have gathered while creating these resources to the S1000D community.

Victoria Ichizli-Bartels,

Aalborg 2022

Introduction

What Is S1000D?

S1000D — International specification for technical publications using a common source database⁴ — has become the preferred technology standard for sophisticated technical publications. 

In the preface, I wrote about the reasons for my personal investment in it and why I can’t let it go.

Here is a more formal — but not without mentioning a humorous aspect — introduction to the S1000D and what it is about.

S1000D is utilized globally, both geographically and across the landscape of products and industries. Both the defense and civil sectors widely implement it for products ranging from small hand-held devices to those that fly, float, or move on land.

Here is how S1000D is defined in its latest version, Issue 5.0 — and in most of the other Issues:

S1000D is an international specification for the procurement and production of technical publications. While the title restricts its use to technical publications, it has been found through application that the principles of the specification can be applied to non-technical publications. — S1000D Issue 5.0, Chap 1.1, Para 2

Short, clear, and easily understandable. These characteristics apply to all the information it contains.

Of course, the text of S1000D is written by humans and therefore contains some errors and conflicting definitions, which are removed and corrected in subsequent Issues. 

But in general, it can be said that if you need to know how to design, generate, maintain, exchange, discard, or perform some other action within the life-cycle of a technical (or non-technical) document coded with Extensible Markup Language (XML)⁵, you will find the answer in this specification.

If the company or organization you work for or with belongs to one of the stakeholder communities of S1000D, you can join the local or global S1000D working groups or task teams as an active member and suggest an addition or correction to its XML Schemas, the specification text, or other objects the S1000D Steering Committee and working groups provide and maintain. 

Your change proposal will be examined, along with others, and consideration given as to whether it adds something new and is needed, or whether it redefines existing concepts and constructs. 

You might even find yourself engulfed in S1000D Heavy E-Mail Traffic (SHET). I think the proximity of this acronym to a curse word was intentional. And, by the way, it is an official S1000D abbreviation — see Chap 9.2.2, Para 1.4. This S1000D Heavy E-Mail Traffic houses many suggestions and examples of achieving what you are looking for using the elements and attributes already available in many S1000D XML Schemas.

Presumably you would agree that the redefinition and reinterpretation of existing constructs would only add unnecessary weight (both in a physical and mental sense) to what is already in the region of three thousand five hundred pages.

Many people in the S1000D community would sympathize if you felt uneasy or even terrified when your manager said, Download the S1000D Issue (put here the one you’ve been told to work with). Report to me in one month on what it is about and what we have to do to implement it.

Evidently, S1000D and other standards and specifications are written to be applied and not read for pleasure. Thus, all its readers and users look for hints and key concepts to determine what they need to decide and consider before beginning the implementation process.

Major technical concepts and constructs were defined from the very first (Initial) Issue of S1000D back in the 1990s, but only once Issue 4.1 was published in 2012 could you open the specification and find a list of points you needed to address to implement it — those where you have to make individual decisions about the options offered by the standard. But again, just like the volume of the specification, the sheer number of these decision points will appear daunting.

Fortunately, most of those who develop and maintain the specification are also users of it, responsible for implementing it in their projects and organizations.

Thus, the S1000D starts with two immensely helpful chapters, Chap 1 and 2, Introduction to the specification and Documentation process, defining what it is about and introducing how to begin the process of its implementation.

This helpful material might not completely remove the daunting impression given by the sheer volume of technical and business concepts and constructs covered by the S1000D. Still, it gives you a little boost into the fascinating world of technical publications.

I never thought much of technical manuals before starting working with S1000D. But as I got immersed in it more and more, I realized the endless multidimensionality of data and processes required to produce and maintain usable, efficient, effective, and always up-to-date technical information about complex products, such as planes, helicopters, trucks, ships, plants and many others.

S1000D is just one of the technical specifications of the so-called S Series Integrated Logistics Support Specifications.⁶

The S Series suite is comprised of the following:

SX000i International guide for the use of the S-Series Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) specifications

S1000D International specification for technical publications using a common source database

S2000M International specification for materiel management — Integrated data processing

S3000L International specification for Logistics Support Analysis — LSA

S4000P International specification for developing and continuously improving preventive maintenance

S5000F International specification for in-service data feedback

S6000T International procedure specification for Training/TNA

Each of these specifications is multidimensional. But S1000D is fascinating because any change — however tiny — in the data or processes reflected by any other specification in the list affects processes described in the sister specifications at least marginally. And all of these factors multiply in their effect on technical publications produced in conformance with S1000D. 

This is true because those technical publications are what the maintainer or operator of a product consults with or follows when doing their job or learning about the job they have to do.

What Are S1000D Business Rules?

There is probably no other S1000D concept as controversial as the S1000D business rules.

The business rules themselves are not an S1000D invention. Many other areas use the concept.

A business rule defines or constrains some aspect of business and always resolves to either true or false. Business rules are intended to assert business structure or to control or influence the behavior of the business. Business rules describe the operations, definitions and constraints that apply to an organization. Business rules can apply to people, processes, corporate behavior and computing systems in an organization, and are put in place to help the organization achieve its goals. — Business rule, Wikipedia⁷

I came to see business rules as a functioning knowledge base of all the decisions taken in a project, business, or organization.

There has been a certain reluctance towards S1000D business rules in the past couple of years. One possible reason is that many topics considered within the S1000D community are brought up, discussed, and implemented within one publication cycle of an S1000D Issue. The business rules question has been there for many Issues without being entirely resolved.

There is also a controversy about business rules. Some community members say, We’ve talked enough about business rules. Now we need to do the work and implement the specification. Some others say, Yeah, standardizing business rules is necessary, but I have more urgent concepts to develop and bring into S1000D.

And then, there are members of the Business Rules Working Group (BRWG) who say, "We have to figure