XML and Integration to Legacy Systems to Websites

We may talk a lot about XML and there are numerous technical papers out there about what it does, but it's always nice to see what the benefits are from a business perspective.

Our client, a local TV station, had to interact with a legacy Unix system that managed television programming across different locations in Australia. Using this system, they would receive a text document, with content primarily consisting of scheduling and programme information, and then convert it into two different Word documents.

Our consultants analysed the current systems with the intention of writing a new customised application to manage the process. They quickly discovered that the current system with all its visual limitations could actually be far better utilised than it was, and that by using XML web services they would be able to send data to the website as well as the CMS back office for other processing.

The result in time savings on the project was approximately 4 weeks and implementation was done over only 4 days. This system now shows a real time TV guide on the public website and the two internal word documents are created at a click of the button by utilising the Word XML function in Office 2003.

Going forward we have extended the XSD schema so that in the future we can incorporate time-sensitive information and also report on trends of usage. This reporting will help to identify the programming content that website visitors are looking for as well as compare this content against television ratings.