7.6

Metadata
Simply put, metadata is data about data or, in other words, information tagged to data. Metadata includes information about
the data file itself, the document, page properties, page counts and custom user fields.
Applications or plug-ins created in PlanetPress Suite 6 and using Metadata will need to be updated for use in version 7.
No backward compatibility mode is available.
When a user-defined emulation is used with metadata, results and behavior are unknown and unsupported. For
instance, refreshing the metadata file may cause the document to crash and/or corrupt. For this reason, it is strongly
advised to create backup copies of your documents beforehand.
Metadata structure
Metadata in PlanetPress Suite Version 7 introduces the following concepts for adding information to a job:
l Page: 1 side of a physical paper sheet.
l Datapage: 1 atomic unit of content that produces zero, one or more pages.
l Document: group of 1 or more ordered datapages intended to the same recipient from the same source (ex:
invoice).
l Group: a logical and ordered group of documents (ex: all invoices for a specific customer number; all documents
going to the same address, etc.)
l 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 ele-
ments 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 rec-
reated or refreshed.
As an example, consider the typical case of a PlanetPress Design document which uses a Line Printer datafile of transactional
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:
l The job contains only invoices for clients located in Montreal.
l Since more than one invoice can go to the same recipient, invoices are grouped by customer.
l Each invoice is a document resulting from the execution of a PlanetPress Design document over one or more datap-
ages, which results in zero or more physical pages being output.
©2010 Objectif Lune Inc - 97 -