7.0

16.1 More on Metadata
Simply put, metadata is data about data. It is information tagged to data. For example, data about a given
PDF file can include the file size, the date it was last modified, etc. {At the page level, metadata can include
the page size, whether it is a front or back page, the page number, etc..}
PlanetPress Suite 7.0 introduces a user interface to easily input and output metadata with PlanetPress Design,
and use this metadata in your PlanetPress Suite Workflow Tool. Example use cases includes, but are not
restricted to: adding a 'Page X of N' to a physical page (with X and N being metadata fields), adding a missing
customer's email to a page by retrieving it from a database holding both the customer number and his or her
email address. In addition, an Application Programming Interface (API) is available for end-users to access
and modify metadata without any limitations with regards to file format.
Important note: Note that any application or plug-in that was using metadata in prior versions will have to
be updated. No backward compatibility mode is available.
Metadata Structure
Metadata in PlanetPress Suite Version 7 introduces the following concepts for adding information to a job:
• Page: 1 side of a physical paper sheet.
• Datapage: 1 atomic unit of content that produces zero, one or more pages.
• Document: group of 1 or more ordered datapages intended to the same recipient from the same
source (ex: invoice).
• Group: a logical and ordered group of documents (ex: all invoices for a specific customer number; all
documents going to the same address, etc.)
• Job: file that contains 1 or more groups.
When Metadata is produced for a given job, a hierarchical (i.e. tree-like) structure is created, composed of the
above elements in the following order: Job->Group(s)->Document(s)->Datapage(s)->Page(s). Any operation
that modifies the data with regards to this structure (ex: remove pages, alter the data, etc.) makes the
metadata obsolete and so it must be recreated or refreshed.
As an example, consider the typical case of a PlanetPress Design document which uses a Line Printer datafile
of transactionnal data in order to generate PDF invoices for a series of clients. By using the Metadata tools
available in PlanetPress Suite version 7, we can add the following information to the datafile:
• The job contains only invoices for clients located in Montreal.
• Since more than one invoice can go to the same recipient, invoices are grouped by customer.
• Each invoice is a document resulting from the execution of a PlanetPress Design document over one or
more datapages, which results in zero or more physical pages being output.
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