RSS technology is used widely today for communication and notification about changes in Web content. I think that RSS is massively undervalued as a technology for the PLM community and in Enterprises in general. What would happen if we used RSS to notify about CAD or 3D Content? Today’s RSS is plain XML content, but this content could be enhanced by 3D / CAD capabilities. As soon as this would be possible, we could use if for numerous applications – i.e. supply chain, collaboration among teams, and notification of customers.
Such applications could be modified RSS readers. Since a typical RSS reader is a Web application, customers would be able to use it anywhere and anytime – in the office, while using Mobile devices, etc. This sounds like a very powerful capacity… what do you think?
And for weekend, take a look on this nice video - RSS in Plain English.
I agree with you that RSS is undervalued technology in the enterprise. It will enable the apparition of cheap to build yet very powerful mash up.
An example of specific adaptation of RSS to a particular domain is http://georss.org/.
–yml
Yml, thanks for the link! One of the reasons, I think, RSS is undervalued is because most of enterprise systems heavily use RDBMS and RSS primary can be used with web content based systems. -Oleg
Hi Oleg,
I’m also a big fan of RSS. A simple application would be to subscribe to an object and be notified of any changes in status. Have you seen any PLM systems that do this using RSS?
Best Regards
Tom
Hi Tom, I never seen such functionality in PLM system. I think nature of enterprise systems in general and today’s PLM systems are not compliant to such type of communication. In general terms enterprise system protect content and allow access via transactions (or how it called in modern language – business process). RSS is more content oriented and open if you will…
-Oleg
This is a slick idea. Look at the vuuch demo where during a reply to a question asked from SW, one of the people who reply do so from Excel. In Vuuch the cells selcted in the reply can be persitent, meaning they can be a feed. We don’t detail this in the demo today becuase we feel the user model needs to be evaluated.
chris, as soon as we will be able to enable feeds for CAD entities, it will be easy to do. but some alternatives can work too… will think more
…
what do you call by user model? – Oleg
Hi Oleg,
If PLM systems could publish via RSS, would you even need a custom reader?
For example, If you put an edrawing in a post, like the animation above, and the viewer was installed, Would viewing just work within the RSS reader?
Regarding mashups, is it possible to combine multiple RSS streams into a single subscription? It doesn’t seem possible in the google reader.
YML, I looked at the GeoRSS, and it looks interesting. Is this an active project?
Best Regards
Tom
Hi Tom, My idea of customizable RSS reader was around way to arrange posts. This is some layout that can be optimized for 3D/CAD system… does it make sense?
I think so.
Hi Oleg,
Are you talking something like a stylesheet or configuration in the reader define how the streams display? For example, you could have a graphic pulled from one section, BOM info, and maybe the latest change, all displayed as a mash up?
As I reread your post, it looks more like a subscription to 3d content updates.
Tom, Subscription on 3D content is part of this for sure. Example of scenario – I want to be subscribed on changes in particular part in context of specific assemblies/configurations.. I had feeling that if some 3D content will be delivered via RSS (i.e. 3DXML or JT) it can be cool… Style sheets etc. is already part of reader in my view or client app. Thx. Oleg.
Hi, I come at this from the perspective of the Geo-world, and yes, I can say that GeoRSS has been an active project and has several implementations in place now that work very well with each other. Over on my blog I’ve made some comments about how the existing GeoRSS could be used to contain a 3D payload, but that this may not be the right way to necessarily go. Anyway, it will be very interesting to see what emerges — I know we would be interested in supporting whatever would rise to the top in our product line.
Dale
Hi Dale, Thanks about your comments! From first look GeoRSS reminds me location encoding of pictures in photo cameras..does it make sense? If you use these photos on flikr (or other community sites) it can add significant added value…
Regards – Oleg
@Oleg — the GeoRSS is integrated into many lightweight web 2.0 situations — for example, if you have a source of GeoRSS (like http://www.nanaimo.ca/subscribe/incidents.aspx for example) you can get it displayed right on top of a google map via http://maps.google.com?q=http://www.nanaimo.ca/subscribe/incidents.aspx. There are several flavors of GeoRSS — a couple of years ago I blogged about them as well. Since then the use of GeoRSS has continued to evolve, and certainly it is a very handy Web 2.0 geo format. A 3D equivalent would be very nice indeed.
Dale
Everything’s Coming Up 3D…
Now that Valentine’s Day is behind us, rather than “everything coming up roses,” it seems to me that everything is coming up 3D. At least everywhere I turn.
Hot on the heels of a very informative URISA BC seminar titled “The New Dimension in …
[...] Is RSS an automated fetch?I think you can say yes to this question. The problem I see is how many feeds can you manage before you have another inbox mess? My guess is this is a small number and therefore RSS ends up generating more noise than value. Unless there is a simple way to turn on and off or dynamically manage these feeds. What if you could fetch on the fly? What if you could select a cell in excel or a set of features in CAD and see all the discussions (all questions asked about this selection) and all the replies and all the supporting files people used to reply? [...]